☕️ Change Please
☕️ Change Please
A life changing cup of coffee
Last week I tweeted and shared this:
My initial idea was to use the help of AI to build a table. I’d then use it to create a new bot, similar to the Gender Pay Gap Bot, but for greenwashing. Let’s see how it turns out.
🛠️ Tools and companies
Breadwinners - Supporting refugees and young people seeking asylum into employment through artisan baked goods.
🙏 Good and Not-so-Good Bits
Rising temperatures in tropics to lead to lower coffee yields and higher prices, study suggests — Donna Lu
This School on Wheels Delivers Tutoring — And Hope — For Homeless Students — Magda Hernandez
😍 Spreading Love
Trained as a chef at one of the best culinary schools in the US. In 2010, he saved a person who’d jumped into the River Thames in London. For this heroic act, in 2012 he was given an award by the Queen. Five years later he was still homeless.
“We met up, and I got a job. Within a few days I was in a hostel. I was wearing clean clothes. I was clean shaven. I was able to have a shower. I had food in my stomach. I don’t think I would have survived much longer. Change Please basically saved my life.” — Adan Abobaker
🌰 Good business in a nutshell
Company - Change Please
What they do - Train people facing homelessness to become baristas and offer support with housing, therapy, and health services.
How they started - Cemal Ezel once was visiting a Banksy exhibition when he saw an interesting piece of art: a homeless person with a cup of coffee by his side, holding a sign written: “Keep your coins, I want change”.
Areas of Impact - Poverty Alleviation
Saving the world - 500 trainees have become baristas
How they make money - Selling coffee
Revenue - £144,000 (Sep ‘22 - Nov ‘22)
Who started everything - Cemal Ezel
📖 The long version
🧩 Problems
Rise in the number of people living rough on London streets
💡 How they started | How they are going
Visiting a tea shop in Vietnam run by deaf and mute people in 2013 was the starting point for Cemal Ezel.
Two years had passed when in 2015, Ezel saw a person facing homelessness, at a London train station holding a sign “Change Please“.
Then, some weeks later he went to a Banksy exhibition and saw this art:
2 weeks later, he handled his resignation from a financial job to start Change Please.
🌎 Saving the world
500 trainees have become baristas
5,000 nights of accommodation provided
Over 7,500 coffees were donated to frontline health workers during Covid
☄️ Impact Model
Profit from coffees sold is used to help people facing homelessness via two different programmes:
a) Academy - Training them to become baristas and work on Change Please locations or their partners.
b) Driving for change - Change Please baristas are also supported with housing, personal finance, therapy support, and health checks.
💰 Let’s talk money *
$350k funding
💪 Join the cause
https://www.linkedin.com/company/change-please/jobs/
🎬 Who started everything
Cemal Ezel