NCC Coffee Lab is focused on the business of coffee. It is a faculty-student-partner collaboration that focuses on direct trade, relationship-based social enterprises. Our largest initiative is our relationship selling with our Guatemalan partners including coffee, chocolates, and artisan products. Since 2006, professors have led biannual trips to Guatemala to help students better understand the idea of social entrepreneurship and its impact. In addition, the trips have inspired student research projects ranging from the challenges of international coffee marketing to ethnographic studies into customary law and indigenous spirituality. At the heart of North Central College’s purpose, is growing the cycle of mutual empowerment.