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QUEENS WEEKLY, JANUARY 12, 2020
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.
“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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