Your Coffee Creates Opportunity

Every drink you enjoy here supports paid job training, mentorship, and belonging for refugees and immigrants in Fort Collins.

A woman with dark hair and a black headband is pouring steamed milk from a metallic pitcher into a green cup on a counter in a café. The background includes a menu board and shelves with drinks.

More Than a Coffee Shop

At Arboretum Coffee, every barista is part of a paid apprenticeship program designed to help refugees and immigrants build skills, confidence, and community. This is a place to work, but also a place to belong.

What you see is a coffee shop.
What you don’t see is everything happening beyond the bar:

  • Life-skills classes and learning transferable skills
  • Mentorship and resource navigation
  • Career and leadership development
  • A community where people find belonging

A Story Behind Your Cup

When Aseel arrived in Colorado from Jordan, she was focused on survival.

Through Arboretum Coffee’s apprenticeship, she gained job skills, confidence, and a supportive community. Today, she works full-time as a teacher and has launched a restaurant, Sahtein, with her husband..

That’s the impact of this coffee shop.

Meet More Apprentices

Why Your Purchase Matters—And Why It’s Not the Whole Story

Your coffee keeps the café running and creates dignified, paid jobs. But the apprenticeship is more than a job.

Coffee keeps the shop running.
Donors make the full apprenticeship possible:

  • Mentorship
  • 800+ hours of deeper on-the-job training
  • Life-skills to navigate work and life in the U.S.
  • Entrepreneurship and cafe management learning
  • Long-term support and stability

The Impact, Together

Together, this leads to real outcomes:

  • 100% of apprentices gain transferable skills
  • 100% of graduates find employment or further education after the program
  • 100% experience belonging
A woman wearing red glasses and a black jacket, smiling and posing with her arms outstretched in a cafe. She has a name tag on her blue scrubs. The background shows a wooden counter with various items and plants.

Take the Next Step

Every purchase matters. You’re already helping create opportunity.

If you want to go one step further:

Donate Here

Become a donor and help sustain life-changing opportunities.