Building Community Deans Beans

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Project Description

At first glance, our assignment with Dean Cycon and Dean’s Beans seems fairly rote. We have been asked to make the local coffee maker’s internship program more solid, quantifiable, and structured by producing a document explaining the 12 available internships, what is required, and with whom an intern would work. To meet this goal, we have been going to Dean’s “Beanery” in Orange, MA to learn about and even briefly participate in some of the internships to gain a better understanding of what they are and what’s required.

If you’re curious, you can see a couple preliminary descriptions of internships that we’ve started on.

In trying to give this project some longer lasting effects, we have begun a conversation with Kenneth Koopmans about reaching out to local institutions to try to create either partnerships, named internships, or any such cooperation to create a reliable connection between interested institutions and Dean’s Beans. Some important questions we are asking Mr. Koopmans and Mr. Cycon include which institutions to choose to form these relationships and why (e.g. Community colleges? Private Institutions? High schools? Community centers?); what kinds of resources can be offered to support these interns (e.g. Stipends? Travel?); as well as identifying the internships Dean’s Bean needs most and how to achieve a solid stream of interns for that position. This implementation of our written document, is how we feel that we might be able to leave a lasting impact for Dean’s Beans when we leave at the end of the semester. For right now, we’re working on both.

We also were taught a bit about work on the beanery floor, and have attached a couple photos of that just for the fun of knowing where Val coffee comes from.