Kylie McMorris and Arisa Barton set up a 501 c-3 charity to start a daycare in the forgotten slums of Kumbatia, Kenya.
LOGAN – Two Logan women are trying to change the world one cup of coffee at a time.
Pour Overs with Purpose, located in the Eastside and Westside Coffee companies, is the invention of Kylie McMorris (a Stanford Psychology graduate) and Arisa Barton (a Utah State University Sociology graduate). The two set up a 501c-3 charity to start a daycare in the forgotten Mshomoroni slums of Mombasa, Kenya.
Some of the bigger city slums get corporate or large organizations to help the people who live there. The forgotten slums have no support, McMorris said.
“Young mothers leave their children for days and sometimes for weeks as they go to work or school. The kids are either orphans or live in extreme poverty,” she said. “The children have no food and no one to care for them while their mothers are gone. It leaves the children vulnerable to human trafficking and other dangerous situations.”
She spent six months in Africa a few years ago and has an idea what she is headed towards. For Barton, this will be her first experience. The girls are working two and three jobs apiece and saving for their own room and board both in Logan and for their stay in Kenya. They are also selling merchandise, mugs and insulated drink containers as well as COVID-protecting face coverings and hot pads all made in Mombasa.
They said they felt like everything was lining up for them to be successful, so they are feeling confident it is a good decision. One dollar goes a long way in Kenya, so their confident they can get something started. Not only are they trying to give children a place to stay and learn, but they also want to feed them two meals a day.
“Kenya stopped issuing 501C’s; ours was the last one,” McMorris said. “We have several suitcases of toys we are taking with us and our carry ons’ are for our personal items.”
She said the reason they are doing it on their own is they know where all of the money is going, to the 501c with no red tape without any administrative cost.
“I’ve never been to Africa, but Kylie has told me so much about it I’m so excited to go,” Barton said. “It was either go to graduate school or do this.”
To mail 20 lbs of toys would cost over $1,000, they said, so they are going to take what they can with them.
“We hope to build a self-sustaining preschool that will someday be run by the people there,” Barton said. “We hope to get it to a point where it will create jobs for the people that live there.”
Pour Overs with Purpose serves coffee donated from roasters around the world. A pour over is a method for coffee enthusiasts where hot water is poured directly over a freshly ground coffee beans held in a filter directly into a cup.
The Westside Coffee Company is located at 285 N. 100 W. in Logan, and the Eastside Coffee Company is located at 1345 E. 700 N. next to Fredrico’s Pizza. Both are owned by John and Diane McMorris of Logan.
The ladies are scheduled to fly to Africa on Saturday.