Last week, the Erlik Oslo foundation opened the coffee bar =Kaffe, where people from the street community in Oslo will serve coffee and good experiences to the Norwegian people.

It was a nervous bunch who were ready for the opening party of the coffee shop =Kaffe. Together with Petter Nyquist, best known as Petter Uteligger, they have been working hard for the past two months in the run-up to the opening.

The city's new baristas have been working on this project for a long time, breaking several barriers and taking the challenge head on. Over the past year, they have traveled to Africa to see how coffee is produced and attended a barista course at Solberg & Hansen. They have received expert guidance and prepared themselves well, and now they are ready to get started.

=Kaffe is a new answer to an old challenge. When the street magazine =Oslo became a reality twelve years ago, the goal was to give vulnerable people human dignity through work, a sense of belonging and meaningful days. After many years of running =Oslo, however, it became clear that more jobs were needed, and that's how the idea for the coffee shop was born.

Few coffee shops can fill an entire street during the opening, but =Kaffe is no ordinary coffee shop either. People flocked to catch concerts by Paperboys and Endless. They also got to hear Sondre Foyn Gullvåg read his own poems. Sondre has been selling = Oslo for several years and has also published three poetry collections on his own publishing house despite having struggled with addiction for several years. Now he will be working as a barista at = kaffee.

Sondre's poems can also be read on the cups in the coffee bar, where each of the seven employees has contributed their own words of wisdom.

Sondre has performed his poems for large gatherings before, but he had to admit that he was a little extra nervous before going on stage this evening. The coffee shop has attracted a lot of attention and many people had turned up to support the project.

- "This is beyond all expectations. Now we've started, now the adventure begins. We've become a very close-knit group, and it's amazing that we've achieved all this in such a short time. The goal is to spread good cheer and make good coffee. We received good training from Solberg and Hansen, and it's coming in handy.

The entire journey of Sondre and his new colleagues has been documented and will be shown on TV 2 sometime next year. Sondre says the trip to Rwanda made an impression:

- The past year has been very educational. Traveling to Rwanda made a big impression on me. We learned a lot about coffee, but also about how unfair the world can be. You should be happy that you live here and have the opportunities you have. Fortunately, the conditions on the farm we visited were very good. It's nice that we are familiar with the quality of the coffee we serve," says Sondre seriously.