Friday, November 28, 2008

Voice from the Field: Eduardo Torres Navarrete

Eduardo Torres Navarrete is the director of CAMPO, a longtime Coffee Kids partner in Oaxaca, Mexico. The organization recently celebrated 20 years and the opening of a regional training center funded by Coffee Kids (see coverage of the event on our blog). Coffee Kids staff sat down with Torres briefly during the celebration to ask a few questions.

On program development:
“You must say something, you have to start with an idea and when the people say something and it comes from inside the community and they are expressing a want or a need, that’s when it begins. If you don’t question things, if you don’t think, if you don’t imagine, there’s nothing that can move you. But with one word, why does this happen? Why is there poverty? Suffering? Injustice?

“Challenges provoke us to look at what we have. That’s what motivates us, and this is one of the interesting aspects of CAMPO, we are going to experiment. We are going to produce and we are going to demonstrate that these things can be successful. If we don’t believe we can succeed, we have nothing.Unless you start you won’t achieve anything, but these words will guide you and take you where you want to go.”

Advice for other organizations:
“I believe every organization confronts the idea of what you are and what you should be. We should be better, we should be more democratic. The ‘should be’ can become an obligation over time.”

“But what do you want to be? What do you want to be and do? And this is the only suggestion I have, that you do everything that comes to mind. Invent, propose, experiment, fail, and in that way you will move your own development forward. For organizations that are old like us, you must leave your fears. Dare to try new things. Trying something will never fail you. If our organization doesn’t transform, it will die. And we’ve been able to transform over the years. It’s a challenge, its never easy, but it’s necessary.”

On success of programs:
“If you ask CAMPO how many poor people are there after all of these years? Well, there are fewer poor people, but we don’t work for that. We work to give people the power to address what they want to see. We have seen many things happen and we’ve seen people helped. We’ve worked in a lot of ways and lot places.

“We know the radicals, we know the conservative, and we understand those who have no hope. We’ve never tried to work in a box or in a certain way. We have tried to give support to the people to realize their own internal power to develop their community in the way they want to with knowledge and awareness and this is what I believe is the most important.

“The rest is just numbers.”

On their new training center:
“In the mission of CAMPO, we talk about exercising rights. There are many who demand for their rights and look for respect of rights. And we say, let’s stop demanding and demanding and demanding. We need to exercise our rights to health, to housing, to food, to education.

“This training center is an option for the people, an option with open doors. We capture rainwater, we recycle grey water, treatment of water, composting, all sorts of projects. We try to integrate all of them so people can see ways to make it work in their communities. Not every project will work in every community, but here visitors will have a chance to see all of these systems integrated and have the opportunity to find what works, learn from CAMPO and take it back to their communities.

“We have 25 different projects on display here. These projects can be seen in many places, but we’ve brought it all together here in one space. To put it all together and integrate each piece it and open it up to the community so people can come in and see how to do it, this is part of our mission.”

On the support of Coffee Kids:
“In my 20 years with CAMPO, we’ve been fortunate to have the support of a number of organizations. A large organization from Holland helped develop a lot of our programs. And then there is a small organization named Coffee Kids that took the bet on this training center project that no one wanted to fund. We sent it all over to Germany, Belgium. At one point, we weren’t sure how to make it work. But Coffee Kids understands the importance of these demonstration projects.

“Size and amount of money isn’t what is important, it’s what the organization carries inside that can transform the world. Whether or not we succeed or not is not important, but good intent and learning from your challenges is what is important, and, like CAMPO, Coffee Kids understands this.”

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Oaxacan Partner Opens Training Center, Celebrates 20 Years

This past weekend (Nov. 21-23), I traveled down to Oaxaca, Mexico, to attend the 20th Anniversary celebration of Coffee Kids’ partner, CAMPO. They also dedicated their new training center, which they built with support from Coffee Kids.

The new training center teaches by example. It was built using an environmentally-friendly compacted earth technique. Similar to adobe, it involves building molds and compacting dirt to form a solid wall. A water catchment system below the building collects rainfall in two large cisterns. The thick walls keep the building cool in the summer and warm when the temperature drops. CAMPO also has a number of demonstration projects to teach visitors from throughout the state of Oaxaca about organic gardening, permaculture, composting, fish farming, grey water treatment and bee keeping.

Over 800 people attended the celebration. Before dinner was served, I gave a few words about the importance of CAMPO’s work and presented them with a certificate from Coffee Kids on behalf of all of our supporters to honor their work improving the quality of life in the entire region.

After dinner I ran into Pedro Osorio. We’d met a year earlier when Coffee Kids staff visited the community of Santa Cruz Tepetotutla, a far-flung community clinging to a mountainside in the Sierra Mixteca. He told me about their efforts to develop a new cooperative for coffee farmers in the area and a number of their efforts to diversify local income. When we last visited the community, they were working on a small eco-hotel for tourists. Santa Cruz is in the middle of a globally-important nature preserve and many in the community have learned the importance of conserving their natural resources and how it can be marketed to attract tourists. Hope I can get back there for a visit some day.

After dinner, Jose Carlos Leon Vargas and Jose Luis Zarate from our Oaxaca office and I interviewed Eduardo Torres Navarrete, one of the founders of CAMPO. We had a great conversation and it’s easy to understand why CAMPO has been so effective over the past 20 years thanks to his leadership. I’ll be posting excerpts from our interview with him soon.

Thanks to all of our supporters who have make the projects we support possible. These efforts are making a great difference. If you’d like to see more pictures from the event, please visit our Flickr page. If you’d like to support Coffee Kids efforts, Coffee Kids donate page and make your contribution today.

Thursday, November 20, 2008

Coffee Kids on Google Earth

Ever wanted to travel to see where Coffee Kids’ partners work? Well, now you can… on your computer. All of Coffee Kids’ partners in Latin America have been posted on Google Earth thanks to help from Winston Rost at Green Mountain Coffee Roasters.

Simply download Google Earth at http://earth.google.com and install the program on your computer. Then download the link below and double-click it to open up a list of all of Coffee Kids partners. By clicking on the partner’s names, you can see where they are based, get information on how they’re helping coffee-farming families, and find links to photos of their work.

CoffeeKids_2008-2009.kmz

Friday, November 14, 2008

Coffee Kids Announces New Project Partners for 2008-2009

This time of year is always exciting at Coffee Kids. It’s when we announce our project partners for the coming year and begin sending out grants for their programs. We are proud to announce our 12 project partners for 2008-2009. Our partners work in health care, education, microcredit and other community-based programs. This year many have added food security components to address rising food costs. (If you’d like to support these projects, please visit our donate page.)

Many families in coffee-farming communities served by Coffee Kids’ partners cited an almost 100% increase in prices of food staples over the past year. Given increasing populations and the demand for feedstock to produce biofuels, food shortages are affecting people around the world. That means that many of the families served by our partners cannot afford things like education or basic health care since they have to divert almost all of their income to food.

Some of our partners’ efforts include:

• Self-Managed Development (AUGE), a partner working in microcredit and savings programs in Veracruz, Mexico, will educate their members of the current food crisis and encourage the creation of small businesses that provide locally-grown food.


• The Union of Independent Workers of Alianza Property (STIAP) used Coffee Kids funds to expand their biodiesel program in the past year, but will create a permaculture gardening project to supply their community with fresh, organic produce.


• The Association of Northern Cooperatives of Nicaragua (CECOCAFEN) in various parts of Nicaragua will complement their microcredit efforts with a new “Alternative Markets” program to help small business owners commercialize their food products.

Other Coffee Kids partners will address community needs to improve access to education and health care, and diversify local economies for more stable income. All of the programs sponsored by Coffee Kids are created by organizations based in the communities they serve.

For more information on all of our partners and their projects for the upcoming year, please visit our program page! And if you’d like to support these projects, please visit our donate page.

Friday, November 07, 2008

Appropriate Technology Provides Appropriate Solutions

I just read a great article from Popular Mechanics on appropriate technology, or the use of relatively low-tech solutions to solve common problems. For example, there has been a lot of work on creating an affordable laptop, but what would families do with a computer if they have no reliable access to fresh water? The article, “MIT’s Guru of Low-Tech Engineering Fixes the World on $2 a Day,” details a number of creative efforts to help families in developing countries generate energy, process food more efficiently and ensure a supply of clean fresh water.

A lot of these ideas are borne of a true understanding of the challenges faced by impoverished communities. Many people visit developing countries and have a gut reaction to what they see; they return home and try to address the problems without really understanding the needs or wants of the community.

Just like many of the efforts discussed in the article, Coffee Kids works to understand community needs and respects the ingenuity of the people we work with. They are the only ones who really understand what could help improve their quality of life.