The strength of long-term relationships and the promise of new ones
As our new fiscal year begins we are thrilled to announce five new partnerships! We look forward to working with these organizations in several new communities in Mexico and Guatemala. As we begin to work together we reflect on our partnerships over the years and emphasize the importance not only of long-term support for these organizations and communities but also the trust, transparency, and ultimately, friendship that ensues from working together to confront poverty at its roots.
Perhaps the most important thing I’ve learned over my years at Coffee Kids is that long-term support of a partner organization is essential to creating sustainable communities. Coffee Kids partner, CAMPO, sets an extraordinary example of the strength of community when both organizations are working together and both recognize that change takes time.
César Morales, program coordinator with our partner CAMPO in Oaxaca, Mexico, talks about CAMPO’s history with Coffee Kids and why long-term support matters. César explains:
Short-term relationships offer few opportunities and few possibilities to think about impact and real results. This isn’t to say that in short-term relationships you can’t establish objectives, rather in short-term relationships – less than 2 years – it isn’t possible to measure impact and to see the evolution of the projects. In the first two years of project support at CAMPO, we were able to reach certain goals, but it wasn’t until after the third year of support and relationship-building when we could really begin to identify and note the influence a project has on a community.
At Coffee Kids we seek to increase our scope to include more capacity-building and technological assistance. César goes on to mention the importance of capacity-building and organizational strengthening.
At CAMPO, the manner in which Coffee Kids supports us has been very important. Coffee Kids allowed us to create local processes of development, from technical assistance to capacity-building, from food security to developing our internal strengths. Initially Coffee Kids, helped us with our operations, but in the past three years Coffee Kids has helped with our organizational infrastructure. This has been incredibly important because it has given us the institutional strength we need to become a sustainable organization.
Of course, none of this would happen if you didn’t believe in Coffee Kids, our partners, the communities, and the families who ultimately benefit from knowing they have your support. On behalf of all of them, thank you.