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MARQUETTE - While Upper Peninsula residents endured arctic blasts, two Northern Michigan University students started the New Year learning about fair trade practices during the peak of the coffee growing season in Nicaragua.

Since their return on January 12, Lisa McCarthy and Sarah Swanson have begun a series of presentations at U.P. churches to encourage Americans to buy fair trade coffee that ensures poor Nicaraguan farmers don't lose money in the labor-intensive industry of coffee production.

The students are the latest of hundreds of faith community representatives traveling to Central America over the past decade with Lutheran World Relief to get a quick course on fair trade while erasing misconceptions about Nicaragua's hard-working low-income farmers who take pride in their coffee.

The fair trade movement was born during the coffee crisis of 1990s when prices "really imploded - it was terrible," said Swanson, 20, an NMU junior majoring in speech language and hearing sciences.

The market price for Nicaraguan coffee in early January 2009 was $1.13 per pound, Swanson said.

Both students are members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America's NMU Lutheran Campus Ministry and their trips were funded by U.P. parishes and donors. The students met with other groups involved in the fair trade effort including Equal Exchange and the Center for Global Education.

"Equal Exchange was the first Fair Trade distributor of coffee in the United States," said McCarthy, 19, an NMU sophomore majoring in photography.

Citing the Underground Railroad run by churches during the American Civil War and sanctuary for refugees during the war in El Salvador, Rev. Jon Magnuson of Marquette said the Fair Trade movement was started by "churches to create an alternative economy to the one that was oppressing small farmers.

"It's a part of the church's work, part of the faith community's mission and a part people don't know about," said Magnuson, who is the Lutheran Campus Ministry pastor at NMU.

"Sarah and Lisa are going to be encouraging churches to sell Fair Trade coffee and chocolate in their basements," said Magnuson,.

The students said Nicaraguan coffee producers seek respect for their heritage, and want foreigners to understand what goes into growing that coffee they love each morning. Nicaraguans hope emissaries like the NMU students will spread the word about fair trade far and wide thus getting people to only buy coffee originating from democratically-run cooperatives that represent the farmers.

"One thing we can do is respect them," said McCarthy during a recent presentation at St. Mark's Lutheran Church in Marquette. "It was really great to go on this trip because it's hard to respect a faceless thing.

"You buy the coffee and respect Fair Trade but going there and seeing that and knowing the work that goes into one cup of coffee - brings it home," McCarthy said. It's important for Americans to know "the amount of work that goes into everything."

The goal of a Lutheran World Relief project "is to build 125 simple but decent houses" for the coffee farmers or their families, McCarthy said. 'They already had 50 built."

McCarthy is impressed with the realistic dreams that's sparked hands-on community action by the co-ops, farmers and other residents are working together to improve their lives.

"The community is just so involved in the schooling for the children, brand new housing and every aspect of surviving," said McCarthy.

Basic principals of fair trade coffee include a guaranteed minimum price for farmers, some profits used help all residents and their children, beans must be purchased from a democratically-run cooperative of small farmers, farmers receive credit up front because "it can be lengthy time" between planting and sale, safe environmental standards are met during the entire process, no child labor and following strict safe environmental standards

Lutheran World Relief, an international nonprofit organization, works to end poverty and injustice by empowering some of the world's most impoverished communities to help themselves.

To learn more about LWR Study Tours, visit www.lwr.org/study