Black 6 Project is ‘Mission Driven, Coffee
Fueled’ by Queens-based military veterans
BY ANGÉLICA ACEVEDO
When Joseph Zoleta and
his fellow paramedic partners
began their humanitarian and
disaster relief nonprofit, Black
6 Project, they didn’t know
it would lead them to coffee
trading.
“I realized that our humanitarian
work has embedded
me in the coffee world,” said
Zoleta, who’s worked as a paramedic
supervisor in Queens
since 2016. “They go hand in
hand.”
Black 6 Project is made up
of veterans and volunteers who
travel across the globe to serve
remote villages with medical
and food needs. They’ve
conducted numerous humanitarian
missions in the Philippines,
Puerto Rico, Guatemala
and Colombia, since they began
the nonprofit in 2017. Just
a year ago, though, they began
working with coffee farmers
in those villages to trade their
goods and roast their coffee
right in Long Island City.
Zoleta and his network of
paramedics, some of which
happen to be military veterans
like him, created the Black 6
Project out of a passion to help
others.
The 39-year-old decided
to pay homage to his Marine
Corps platoon, the Black 6,
when naming the nonprofit.
After witnessing the collapse
of the Twin Towers from his
window on Sept. 11, 2001 — a
moment he considers lifechanging
for many reasons
including the fact that he interned
at the World Trade Center
— Zoleta joined the Marine
Corps.
He experienced two combat
tours in Iraq with the Black
6, and although his unit was
known for its strength, he remembers
some bad losses as
well.
“They’re the ones who
fought with me, in the good
times and bad times,” Zoleta
said. “So I figured what better
name to give my organization
than what we called ourselves
on the radio?”
Now, Black 6 Project conducts
missions almost every
month. In November, they
fed more than 300 indigenous
people in the Philippines and
are currently organizing another
mission to the Bahamas
to provide hurricane disaster
relief.
But it was in October of 2017
when Zoleta was inspired to
start Black 6 Coffee Trading.
At the time, he took a
small team with him to help
with search and rescue after
a typhoon caused a landslide
in Kibungan, Philippines.
During the trip, they stayed
near a coffee farm — which
he thought was amazing because
he didn’t know people
grew coffee in the Philippines.
He also thought it was
a great coincidence considering
he was learning how
to roast coffee back home in
Floral Park.
Zoleta was determined to
take some of the green coffee
to New York City, so he used
his backpack, made by the
veteran-owned organization
Backpacks for Life, to carry
the 40 pounds of beans up and
down the mountains.
TIMESLEDGER | QNS.2 COM | JAN. 10-JAN. 16, 2020
“A few muscle aches later,
I got it back to New York City,
and started roasting,” Zoleta
said. “It was just amazing coffee.
” He emphasizes the trading
aspect of their company
so that customers know they
source the coffee themselves
and use the proceeds to fund
the missions they conduct in
those communities.
For instance, part of the
proceeds from their $18 Café
Tío Conejo X Black 6 Coffee
blend — which is their first
collaboration with Café Tío
Conejo who is based in Manizales,
Colombia — will go
into building a school right on
their coffee farm.
“As a charity, I had so much
trouble funding the missions,
but when I realized we could
just use capitalism to fund our
missions, I did,” Zoleta said.
“Capitalism has a bad stigma
but when you flip it to create
humanitarian work, it makes
me feel better about what I’m
doing.”
Born in the Philippines
and raised in Hollis, Queens,
Zoleta believes that part of
the beauty of being from the
“World’s Borough” is that he
has a vast network of people
he counts on to help him understand
the distinct needs of
the countries they provide humanitarian
aid to.
“When I was dreaming of
creating this organization, it
really made me realize that
Queens was a prime location
for it, because we all understood
and have heard the inefficiencies
of government sometimes,”
he said.
And more often than not,
their team members are either
from or are connected in some
way to the countries they help,
like his best friend and former
Navy corpsman David Guzman,
who’s from Puerto Rico.
“As an outsider, you go
there and you go, ‘Oh, this is
what they need,’ but sometimes
they don’t even know
how to use those products.
Those cultures have also survived
multiple disasters, so
they kind of understand how
to bounce back; our role is just
to give them an extra hand if
they need it,” Zoleta said.
The Black 6 Project has
plans to expand into a coffee
truck in order to take the coffee
wherever it’s wanted in New
York City and convert it into a
disaster relief truck whenever
there’s a natural disaster right
in the U.S. But Zoleta strongly
believes that there are places
outside of the U.S. that deserve
their help, too.
“There’s suffering that happens
daily in countries outside
the U.S. … despite any natural
disasters happening, there are
communities out there that
need it,” Zoleta said.
He recounted a recent
food drive they organized for
an Indigenous tribe in the
Philippines.
“I was so worried about
what we’d feed them and if
they’d like it, ‘Should we put
cilantro in it, would they like
cilantro?’” he said. “But they
were starving … This whole
village lined up just to eat
whatever was there. Some kids
didn’t have shoes, there were
kids that were completely naked,
and they had only one water
spout that wasn’t there two
years ago.”
With the support of organizations
like WeWork and
Bunker Labs’ Veterans in
Residence program and NYU’s
Veterans Future Lab, Zoleta is
able to keep the Black 6 Project
alive.
As a husband and father of
a 4-year-old boy, he’s reminded
everyday why his work is
meaningful. Zoleta said he
likes to take his son to missions
he feels are safe, so that
he sees “how good he has it
growing up in New York, the
biggest city in the world.”
“When Christmas comes,
he’s always like, ‘Can we bring
this to donate?’ and I’m like,
‘How do you know the word donate
already?’” Zoleta laughed.
“And times when it’s quiet, he
always goes, ‘Dad, what’s your
mission?’ because he wants me
to say it over and over, because
he loves it. Hopefully, he gets
to continue the work.”
Joseph Zoleta is the founder of the Black 6 Project. Photo courtesy of Black 6 Project
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