June-September 2026 Impact

June-September Impact

Every bag of Los Ojos Rojos sold this summer and fall went toward one thing: a room in the Dominican Republic that is about to become a maker space. It's called La Fábrica, The Factory, and when it opens it will be a place where students, teachers, parents, and neighbors can build, repair, design, and experiment with real tools and real materials. Not a display case. A workshop.

The best part of the story is the room itself. La Fábrica isn't going into new construction, it's going into a space the school used to run as a daycare. That daycare existed because there were kids waiting for spots in the school's Montessori classrooms, and over the last two years the school enrolled every one of them. The waiting room emptied out because the school did its job. So the room was free, and instead of leaving it empty, they're turning it into something the whole community can use.

What it will actually do comes down to three things. First, making. Kids get access to tools, materials, and the space to use them, and the skills that come with that — problem solving, collaboration, figuring out what to do when the first attempt fails — are the kind that transfer to everything else. Second, community. Students work next to teachers, parents come in and teach what they know, and neighbors contribute ideas and expertise, building a culture where making things and helping each other are the same activity. Third, sustainability, which sits at the center of the space through upcycling, repairing, and reimagining discarded materials. The lesson is simple and it sticks: what looks like trash is usually just material nobody has thought about hard enough yet. Sarah, who runs the school, put it better than I can. She wants the space to give kids "the confidence to ask 'What if?'" and then the tools to go find out.

Construction is underway right now. The school expects La Fábrica to be finished in about a month, and they'll be sending photos as the work progresses, which I'll post as they come in.

Los Ojos Rojos is a student-run coffee brand with no overhead, no salaries, and no marketing budget. People buy single-origin coffee, and the proceeds go to elementary schools in the Dominican Republic. That's the whole model. This season it turned into a workshop full of tools for kids who are about to find out what they can build. If you bought a bag, shared a post, or told someone about us, this is yours too.