Ice Cream Diplomacy
There’s a certain magic in serving others… especially when what you’re serving is Ben & Jerry’s ice cream on National Free Cone Day!
The Trees, Water & People (TWP) team took a break from our day-to-day work this week to have fun with the Ben & Jerry’s team in Old Town Fort Collins, as their nonprofit partner for this national celebration. TWP staff, board, and friends got to scoop hundreds of cones of Phish Food, Cherry García, and Half Baked for a beautiful cross-section of our Fort Collins community.
The line went clear across our town square for hours on end.
As a bonus, our friends from Aldea de Suyapa, Honduras, who arrived last week on temporary work visas, came to close out the shift with full enthusiasm after their workday landscaping. With (very) limited English, they manned the counter for the last 90 minutes of the event, helped by the expert interpretation (and supervision) of 12 year old Emilio and 9 year old Lucía Africano-Menendez.
The laughs shared with customers as they ordered the uniquely named Ben & Jerry’s brands made for a joyous cross-cultural exchange you wouldn’t have seen at any other ice cream shop on a Tuesday night. By the end, our friends were video chatting with family in Honduras as they joked with staff, and served themselves tall double scoops of Ben & Jerry’s signature flavor combinations for the road.
This is what it’s all about for us - building community and inspiring reciprocity among people who may have never interacted, if it weren’t for a common link through TWP.
Because when you partner with TWP, you get the whole package - an engaged staff and board, and all of our extended family representing your cause, and living our values. All in all, we raised almost $1,000 for TWP during the event, but the real reward was the Ice Cream Diplomacy - the meaningful exchanges of love and respect over one of life’s universal delicacies.
