When is a coffee not just a coffee?

At CommunityLIFE SA we’re big believers in community. Probably not all that surprising… But one of the things we’ve found really significant to bringing people together is good coffee, so a few years ago we invested some funds in a quality coffee maker to support our Chatty Cafe, Walking Group, and Brekky Together programs.

It’s not strictly a necessity, but being able to offer people proper, espresso-based coffees feels like a sign of respect, and of really valuing the spaces and the relationships we create.

So imagine our feelings when, a few weeks ago, the coffee machine stopped working!

We shipped it back to the manufacturer, thinking we were just barely in warranty, and maybe we would get it fixed. The reply from the company wasn’t good news. We weren’t covered by warranty after all.

But then something very unexpected happened.

The company, Jura, made us an offer for an ex-demo model of a replacement machine. Our model wasn’t produced any more, so this would have to be the newer model; our machine has supported our community consistently for three years, so this ex-demo model would have made fewer cups of coffee than our broken machine. And they offered it to us at no cost.

The unboxing of the nearly-new machine was cause of much excitement, but our communication with Jura after they made this amazingly generous move was beautiful. We told them what a coffee machine like this means to our community, some of whom may not be able to buy coffee out and about. We told them about conversation and connection. They told us they don’t get to hear what happens to their machines most of the time, and how much they valued knowing what it meant to our community.

Sometimes the world feels pretty hard, but moments like this remind us that generosity is everywhere.

A huge thank you to Jura for enabling us to carry on providing good quality coffee to our community!