Seattle-based coffee syrup maker DaVinci Gourmet has contributed more than half a million dollars to Coffee Kids since 2006, making it the Santa Fe-based non-profit's largest annual donor.

Begun in Seattle in 1989, DaVinci was sold in 2003 to a large Ireland-based food and flavoring company called Kerry Group whose U.S. headquarters is in Beloit, Wisc. It still makes its coffee syrups at a 64,000-square-foot facility in South Seattle.

Coffee Kids works with coffee-growing families and says that with support from DaVinci -- along with $100,000 a year from Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, plus contributions from award-winning baristas and auctioned espresso machines -- it has expanded its work from eight to 15 partner organizations in five countries (Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Peru).

Highlights of Coffee Kids projects this past year:

• Project to train 2,817 people in Veracruz, Mexico, in aspects of nutrition, herbal medicines and family gardening


• A microcredit and savings project in Nicaragua with 683 people whose savings of $46,660 is used as rotating capital for low-interest loans


• Lessons in chicken production for 177 people in four communities in Chiapas, Mexico; families saved an average of $35 a month eating eggs and meat from their chickens and sold the surplus in local markets


• Building a training center Oaxaca, Mexico, to educate hundreds of families in surrounding coffee communities about sustainable agriculture, growing technologies, and human rights