We're so busy with the cafe and affiliated projects, we almost forgot to send you an update on the latest big news. Since you're all the original backer group, we're dedicated to keeping you in the know - and hopefully you can see just what you've helped to start! Read on for the highlights of the last few months at the cafe:

Our new look

Cafe and office staff took the opportunity to give the place a face-lift while Justin, Mel and Katie were retreating in Indonesia. The place has never looked so alive, overflowing with ingenuity, and a smart new menu set on a cafe designed blackboard. Have a look at the Kinyei website for more images.

Dream team

We’ve increased our staff by 50%! After five months of training up what is now our highly qualified barista staff (really! based on feedback from customers), we had an intense hiring round in April. We recruited some of the best and brightest to learn from our best and brightest. We now have seven dedicated cafe staff, including our newly appointed cafe supervisor - Sean. 
We’ve also hired on two part-time Kinyei office staff members who focus their efforts on administrative, accounting and project specific work. We’ve loved having a full and lively office! It won’t be long before we’re going to have to relocate to accommodate the growing project staff.

Temporary experts-in-residence: barista & food scientist

Recently the entire barista team - Sakana, Untak, Sopheap, Sakhey, Sotheareak and Sean - had the awesome opportunity to learn alongside Kinyei volunteers extraordinaire and Mel’s dear friends, Mikey and Ariana. June and July saw coffee making focus groups, hospitality trainings and team building workshops led by the Melbournite team of two, intimately familiar with coffee shop culture. Thanks to their expertise, the Kinyei cafe team enhanced their confidence in communication skills, milk steaming techniques, and smart operational practices. A huge thanks to Mikey and Ariana for their tremendous job in the cafe - and of course for the crafting ideas.

We were also fortunate enough to connect with a recently matriculated food scientist. Erin Hiller, sister of Shannon, friend and fellow Battambangian, came through to fine tune menu items as well as do some cost optimization research on locally available ingredients. Sakana, our resident baker, and Justin spent some quality one-on-one time with Erin. The results? Quality control for our snacks and baked items, and a better informed staff, plus some really fun food experiments to be done - including homemade caramel. Erin commented,

“The staff at Kinyei are extremely kind and welcoming, I think the jokes even started after the first few days that I was there. Hopefully I can make it back one day as it has become one of the top places I would like to revisit and explore more.”

Menu expansion

Macaroons and an old family fruit cake recipe are now available! Check back soon and we may even feature some of the food experiments we’ve been having fun with - eggs benedict and poached pear french toast. Not bad additions to your morning latte!

Other projects

Soksabike is gearing up for a blow out tourist season. We're entering a new chapter in the development of a new 2 day community development education cycling tour and just yesterday hosted 20 applicants for an information session on what it means to be a tour guide with Soksabike. A recruitment drive, the creation of a multi-day tour, and potential partnerships with local, national and international businesses means that the Soksabike project has been anything but quiet this rainy season. Kinyei also recently hosted the Pepy Tour folks for an information sharing session about our projects. We’re also excited about a social impact survey we recently undertook to gauge our footprint on the local families and industries we visit.

A huge thanks to Jan, a Soksabike supporter from Germany who stopped in Battamabang for 2 weeks on his cycling journey through South East Asia to help research routes and stops for Soksabike’s new tour.

Check out more at www.soksabike.com

Sammaki news 

Sammaki opened its doors to the public with a bang in late May. Over 200 showed up, a good mix from all over - Battambang, Siem Reap, Phnom Penh, and Sisiphon. Since its launch in May, the community gallery and studio space has been bustling with people piling in for workshops, Sunday tea parties, lectures, and educational crafting with local youth groups, in addition to the daily foot traffic from tourists passing by. None of this would have materialized without the endless energy of the founding members, and local artists who have come together to make possible the vision for a community space to appreciate and celebrate art.

The latest news is the exceptional solo exhibit by newly minted resident artist, Bo Rithy. His show, Mother’s Sweat was a tribute to his tireless mother who braved the daily plights of poverty in Cambodia to raise her family. Have a look at the show.

We're thrilled with the success of Sammaki since the concept of community-run /community-engaging spaces aligns with the core of Kinyei’s vision. We’re especially excited that it’s getting so much traction in the national press. Pretty rad, guys!

If you’ve dropped by the cafe why not drop us a line on Trip Advisor

We’re currently #5 out of 25 restaurants in Battambang

Barista championships and the future

Kinyei staff are honing their latte art skills for Cambodia’s barista championship coming up in October. We’ve also been encouraged by the requests we’ve gotten for our staff to train new baristas in cafes in Siem Reap and Phnom Penh.

How can you stay involved?

Have a quick take of our abbreviated Kinyei material needs list below. We’re working to get a comprehensive list up on the site to accommodate the many inquiries we get on how to pitch in or get involved with Kinyei

Our tech list includes

+digital cameras (used or new) - with all the photography workshops we’ve been hosting at the open workshop series, our team and the greater Battambang population is increasingly hungry for cameras to help realize their professional + creative ambitions
+computers (used or new) - with our expanded team, our computers are stretched across one too many laps these days, we’re looking for a few extra to have on hand, also for affiliate groups we work with who come by hoping to hop on a machine
+quality USB keys - these can be excrutiatingly hard to find in Battambang

Interested in being an expert-in-residence?

We’d love to host short or long terms visitors with skills or knowledge they want to impart to our teams and/or projects. Contact us and let us know. Thanks again, backers!

Backers, cheerleaders and enthusiasts! Thank you for your unceasing support! Thanks to all of you we made it past our goal of $8500 with a week to go.

To recognise this momentous feat and show our gratitude, the Street One and a Half Cafe staff spent some time hitting the streets, asking Battambangians what they wanted to create in their lives. Our team of amateur journalists just got it in with 48 hours left on the Kickstarter!

Please watch this video and get a glimpse of what people here in Battambang hope to create.

Pass it along and help us smash 10k!

Love,
Kinyei

Film crew - Sakana, Srey Pheak, Untac, Phalla, Sean, Enrico
Music - Sigur Ros (and we really hope they don't mind!)

Hi everyone! 14% and 9 days to go - what a road it has been but the end is in sight! We're so close to our goal we can almost smell it (smells amazing), but with only a little over a week to go it's going to take a concerted push to bring it home in time. You amazing people have helped us get so far but Kickstarter is a harsh mistress and if we can't get that last bit it's all for naught!

If you've been thinking of friends, family or coworkers who would be interested that you just haven't gotten around to talking to - now is the time. If you haven't, now is the time to have a think. Blog it, facebook it, mention it to someone at lunch today, and let's hit that 8.5k goal at full speed!

Some people at Kinyei have never considered that the Kickstarter wouldn't succeed, Srey Pheak and Sakkana among them; steady in the belief that we'll smash it and you'll all need to know how to use your new kromahs in proper Khmer fashion, they have put together a guide to authentic kromah use, as seen below:

Kromah Guide

The "fisherwoman" and the "men's working belt"

The "fisherwoman" style sported by Srey Pheak (left), which is worn to help protect the wearer from the sun. Sakkana (right) is wearing her kroma around the waist in the style of male laborers, who use the kromah as a sweat rag and towel for a midday bath.

The daydreaming "market shopper."

Srey Pheak's introduces the whimsical "market shopper."

Two variants on the "Phnom Penh tie."

Stylish young people wear their kromahs on the way to work and on trips back to their homelands.

The "grandma' and the "rice harvester"

The "grandmother" kromah style is loosely arranged (left), while rice harvesters wear their kromah tied tightly across the forehead.

UPDATE: A few people have requested printable materials to take to their NYE parties which we are more than happy to supply: here is a PDF summary of the kickstarter campaign page which can be printed out and toted around the real world! Thanks guys!

We're cosying up on this Christmas Eve at Kinyei, and just wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas! We also wanted to show off our new sign and make it official. Now everyone from inside the neighborhood and out can find the best spot for coffee and community in town.

And fret not! For those of you in the US (and Europe for a few more hours) who haven't finished the Christmas list, don't forget you can still take advantage of the superb pledge reward offerings. Check out Update #3 to win with gift cards for watercolors and kromah.

Happy Holidays friends!

Love,
Kinyei

Hi Everyone,

Support for the Kinyei ideas cafe over the last couple of weeks has been amazing! We got a great mention from Steve over at The Squiggly Line, presented to really supportive groups at Deloitte Digital's Rapid Prototyping session and Jasper Coffee in Melbourne, and hit the Kickstarter Most Popular list under Food! Thanks to you guys we're just an expensive lunch away from 50% funded which is huge!

Looking into the second half of the campaign we need to keep the momentum going to get fully funded which means if you've donated, please contact your friends and let them know that you did - a personal recommendation from you is the best support we can get at this point!

Finally, we think our rewards would make ace Christmas gifts! If you're doing some last minute shopping or have forgotten anyone, consider pledging for a watercolor or kromah - we're working REALLY hard to make sure the kickstarter succeeds, but don't worry, we'll guarantee rewards for any Christmas pledges if the unthinkable happens.

Just right-click on one of the images below according to the pledge you made, "save as" and save it onto your hard-drive, print it off in time for the 25th, and tell your friend or loved one that their present this year is supporting an awesome project for positive change in Battambang!

Love,
Kinyei

Rather than wait until the end of the Kickstarter, we're pushing ahead with whatever we can do right now—a slightly risky move perhaps, but if you believe in something, you gotta go for it! This weekend we started espresso training.

St 1 1/2 cafe is the product of people from all over the world sharing their skills. Whether Skyping in to provide niche technical assistance, coming up with a menu that caters to our diverse local and international clientele, sending in video tutorials on the perfect caffe latte or coming up with culture-specific cafe workflows, we're creating our collaboration space together—exactly the kind of cooperative venture the space will continue to support going forward!