The women’s cooperative El Privilegio is, in my opinion, a clear example of perseverance and forward thinking. This group of 28 women from the community of El Roblar in Nicaragua was officially founded in 2006. However, their story begins in 1999 when they created the group Women Saving in Solidarity (GMAS) under the guidance of CECOCAFEN (a group of Nicaraguan cooperatives) and with the support of Coffee Kids.

From the beginning, these women were led by Ms. Maira Gámez Hernández, a woman dedicated to bringing her dreams to life.

I remember when I first met Maira in her own home back in 2008. She described to me how the savings groups worked and the challenges they were facing with the men in the community who insisted on joining the savings group but with the clear intention of using funds for livestock.

Maira defended the idea that lines of credit for women were more efficient: the periods of return were shorter and the investment safer. In contrast, raising livestock requires larger investments and a longer waiting period before the initial investment is recovered. This discussion ended with the declaration of an internal policy that limited the inclusion of men in the savings groups, and the decision was made to legally form a woman-only cooperative. This decision was also included in the written statutes of CECOCAFEN.

In 2009, when I visited them for a second time, the meeting place was no longer in Maira’s home. Now they had their own meetinghouse: a small property with a rustic building made of wood, a dirt floor, and furnished only with a few chairs. But I could see how their dream had begun to take form. During that visit, they shared their dream of one day installing a small roaster and selling a portion of their production locally.

Two years later, in 2011, I again paid them a visit. I was this time surprised with the news that they were able to build what was to become a roastery. They hired just one builder and they themselves participated in the labor by carrying bricks, cement, sand and all materials required for construction. This time, they contiguously pointed out to me the place designated for the roaster, the packing area, the storage space for green coffee, and so on. Their dream had become a very clear vision.

In February of 2013, I again visited them. This time they greeted me dressed in uniforms with hats and aprons, complete with a logo that identified them as Café el Privilegio. They now have the necessary sanitary permissions to operate and have a cylinder roaster with a 10-kg capacity as well as storage for green coffee, roasted coffee, ground and packaged coffee. I was fortunate enough to accompany them to take some of their first orders to a few cafes in Matagalpa. Their next dream is to open their own café in San Ramón where their opportunities seem promising.

All of the women from El Privilegio are also coffee producers and each one gives a part of her production to roast and sell under the brand El Privilegio. They are already competing locally with a national brand that is well positioned but not of very good quality.

I am proud to say that I’ve had the privilege to closely follow the dreams of this group of women who, with determination, work and a valuable vision, have managed to transform their dreams into a tangible and positive impact for them and their families.

The post It all begins with a dream appeared first on Coffee Kids.

La cooperativa de mujeres El Privilegio es, en mi opinión, uno de los ejemplos más claros de perseverancia y visión del futuro. Este grupo de 28 mujeres de la comunidad El Roblar en Nicaragua se fundó en el año 2006, tomando la forma de una cooperativa legalmente constituida en aquel país.  Sin embargo, su historia comienza en 1999 cuando se organizan como un Grupo de Mujeres en Ahorro Solidario (GMAS) bajo la tutela de CECOCAFEN, una central de cooperativas en Nicaragua y con el apoyo de Coffee Kids.

Desde sus inicios, las mujeres ahorradoras fueron lideradas por la Sra. Maira Gámez Hernández, una mujer siempre decidida a alcanzar sus sueños.

Los recuerdos de mi primera visita a El Roblar vienen de enero del 2008, cuando conocí a la Sra. Maira en su propia casa.  Ella me explicó como hacían para hacer funcionar los grupos y los retos que tenían con los hombres de la  comunidad, pues estos insistían en ser parte del grupo de ahorro, pero con intenciones claras de acaparar los fondos de crédito para usarlos en la ganadería. La Sra. Maira defendía la idea de que los créditos a las mujeres eran más eficientes, pues los periodos de retorno eran mucho más cortos y las inversiones más seguras, mientras que la ganadería requería fuertes inversiones y un tiempo de espera muy largo antes de recuperar el dinero.  Esta discusión terminó finalmente con la declaración de una política interna que limitaba el ingreso de hombres a los grupos GMAS, además de la decisión de constituirse legalmente como una cooperativa exclusivamente de mujeres. Contribuyó además a la definición de una política escrita en los estatutos de CECOCAFEN.

En 2009  cuando les visité por segunda ocasión el lugar de reunión con las mujeres de El Roblar ya no fue la casa de la Sra. Maira.  Ahora ellas poseían su propio lugar de reuniones, una pequeña propiedad con una construcción rústica hecha en madera, piso de tierra y equipada solamente con unas cuantas sillas.  Sin embargo, pude ver como en este grupo de mujeres un sueño comenzaba a gestarse. Durante aquella visita me compartieron su sueño de un día instalar en ese lugar un pequeño tostador de café y poder vender localmente una porción de su producción.

Dos años más tarde, en 2011, volví a visitarlas, con la sorpresa de que habían logrado construir lo que ellas planeaban convertir en una tostaduría de café. Contrataron a un solo albañil para levantar la obra y ellas prestaron su propia mano de obra, acarreando los ladrillos, cemento, arena y todos los materiales requeridos para la construcción. Esta vez no dejaban de señalarme con sus dedos el lugar en el que planeaban colocar el tostador, el área de empacado, la bodega de café verde, etc. Su sueño existía como una imagen muy clara en sus mentes.

En febrero de 2013 les he visitado nuevamente, esta vez me han recibido vestidas en un uniforme de trabajo, con gorros y mandiles que llevan bordado un logotipo que las identifica con la marca de Café El Privilegio. Cuentan hoy en día con los permisos sanitarios para operar y tienen un tostador de cilindro con capacidad de 10 Kg, un área de almacén para café verde, café tostado, molido y empacado. Tuve la suerte de acompañarles a llevar unos paquetes de café que forman parte de sus primeros pedidos que entregan en algunas cafeterías de Matagalpa. El próximo sueño es abrir su propia cafetería en la localidad de San Ramón, donde las oportunidades lucen prometedoras.

Todas las mujeres de El Privilegio son también productoras de café y cada una aporta una parte de su producción al inicio de la cosecha 2013, para tostar y vender bajo la marca El Privilegio. Están compitiendo ya localmente con una marca nacional que esta muy bien posicionada pero que es de mala calidad.

En lo personal puedo decir con orgullo que he tenido “el privilegio“ de seguir de cerca el sueño de un grupo de mujeres que con determinación, trabajo y una gran visión han logrado convertir sus sueños en un impacto tangible, positivo y esperanzador para ellas y sus familias.

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Claudio: What would a day without coffee be like to you?

Lore: A day without coffee, to me, would mean losing the essence of who I am, because coffee has been a part of me since I was born, since before I was born. Imagining myself without the delicious taste of coffee… No, I can’t imagine it, Claudio. It would be… then there’s everything that it implies: the hopeful anticipation in the coffee fields… No, I can’t imagine it nor do I want to.

Caludio: And how would it affect your family?

Lore: In my family, it would mainly affect my parents in an emotional sense. There would be so much sadness and, I think, sickness, because coffee has given my father so much vitality. He always has the anticipation of seeing his coffee plants, pruning them, fertilizing them. So I think there’d be a lot of sadness and sickness.  And hopelessness. Even though there isn’t currently much of a benefit from farming coffee, it’s the excitement and the love that goes into the coffee plots. I think that my dad and my family would be greatly affected.

Claudio: So what kind of a future do you imagine without coffee?

Lore: Well, I imagine… What future do you imagine without coffee? I don’t even want to imagine it. I imagine that there would be a lot of construction, there wouldn’t be coffee. There would probably be other crops, but all of that nostalgia for the love of coffee in the region and in my family wouldn’t exist. It would be a longing, something like, “Oh, years ago there was a plant that gave us so much.” I have eight siblings and you can imagine what it was like growing coffee all our lives, and collecting wood, helping our parents chop, with the same love for chopping as for returning home to the aroma of coffee, the hurrying up to get home soon to make coffee, when a neighbor says, “Come on in and have a cup of coffee.”No, I can’t imagine a wolrd without coffee. I want there to always be coffee.

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Claudio: ¿Un día sin café, cómo sería para tí?

Lore: Un día sin café para mí sería no sentir la esencia de lo que soy porque el café ha estado en mí desde que nací, desde antes más, imaginarme sin saborear el delicioso café no, no lo imagino Claudio, sería…, aparte, pues, todo lo que implica, toda la ilusión y la esperanza que está en el campo, no me imagino eso ni quiero imaginarme eso.

Claudio: ¿Cómo afectaría a tu familia?

Lore: En mi familia, en mis padres principalmente, afectaría en la parte emocional, habría mucho tristeza, pues, yo creo, enfermedad porque el café le ha permitido a mi papá a mantenerse con mucha vitalidad siempre con la esperanza e ilusión de ver sus plantas del café, ir podarlas, abonarlas, quitarles la hierba, pues yo creo que mucha tristeza y enfermedad. Desesperanza. Aunque actualmente no es tanto el beneficio que se toma del café,  quien lo produce principalmente, es toda la ilusión y todo el amor que le ponen a las fincas yo creo que a mi papá o a mi familia le afectaría muchísimo.

Claudio: Y ahora, ¿qué futuro te imaginarías sin café?

Lore: Pues imaginaría… ¿qué futuro te imaginarías sin café? No, no, es que no quiero ni imaginar. Te imaginas que habría muchas construcciones, no habría café, probablemente habría otro cultivos pero toda esa nostalgia del amor al café, en la zona, en mi familia, pues no existiría, sería como un anhelo, algo como: Ay, hace años hubo una planta, tuvimos muchos beneficios… Pues nosotros somos 9 hermanos y te imaginas toda la vida vivir cultivando el café, incluso colectando la leña, ayudando a nuestros papás a cortar, teniendo el mismo amor a  cortar en la tarde regresar a sentir el olor en las casas del café de olla y el apresurarte a llegar y ponerlo, cuando en una casa te dicen pásale y toma un cafecito. No, no imaginaría un futuro sin café, yo quiero que siempre haya café.

The post A world without coffee: Lorena Flores Peña appeared first on Coffee Kids.

Due to lack of running water, all of the homes in Emilio Rebasa depend on dry latrines for their sanitation needs. Last year, Coffee Kids, along with the Association of Rural Development and Environment (DERMAC), implemented the Organizational Development and Improved Sanitation project to rehabilitate 12 eco-latrines that were becoming a serious hazard for community members.

This year, DERMAC is carrying out a rainwater-harvesting project in Lázaro Cárdenas, Cintalapa, Chiapas, where 18% of households have no access to clean water in or near their homes.

This, of course, makes hygiene difficult, and it’s impossible to maintain vegetable gardens during the dry season. What’s more, the summer months (April through June) bring severe water shortages, which are growing worse with climate change. In a place where families spend, on average, 30% or more of their annual income on food, food security is a serious concern.

Rainwater harvesting will enable families to access water during the dry months and improve their ability to produce fresh, nutritious produce year-round, thereby reducing the burden on their income and improving their overall food security. Families involved in the project will also learn agroecological and organic techniques for the management of vegetable gardens.

This World Water Day, you can learn more about this project and others by visiting out project map.

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My last latrine required a lot of work and some major rehabilitation. Basically, all of the chambers inside the latrine were full, and it was leaking. I’ve only had it for two years, but I can’t use it anymore. This latrine was already set up in the house when my family and I moved in. Each chamber takes approximately one year to fill up, and I think in the past, this latrine was functioning well, but over the past year we weren’t very diligent in handling it (especially my younger sons who frequently forget to add the ash and lime mixture after each use). This is why it’s leaking.

Now my wife and I, after we attended a workshop on latrine care and handling, have learned that it is vital that we give the [latrine] adequate care and handling, especially during the rainy season when it’s harder to keep the ash and lime mixture dry.

My wife and I recently installed a dry latrine because we would like to have the latrine closer to the house. There are six of us in the house: my wife, my four sons and me. Having the latrine closer to the house would be ideal because my sons are very young and sometimes have to go to the bathroom at night. Installing this new latrine was a very hard job because the ground here is just solid rock and digging a 60-centimeter-deep hole proved challenging. But in the end we managed to dig to the specific depth and install a latrine that meets our needs.

The post Armando Sánchez and the dangers of latrine misuse appeared first on Coffee Kids.

Age: 36 years old

Community: Emilio Rabasa, Chiapas, Mexico

Project: Organizational Development and Improved Sanitation

Years in the project: 1

I began this latrine project because we’ve always had a latrine in my house, but it has never worked properly. I now understand that is wasn’t working properly because I didn’t care for it adequately.

When DERMAC came to my community and did a diagnostic of all the latrines in the community, I realized all my bad practices [were causing problems]. Dry latrines require a lot of discipline, and everyone in the family has to learn how to use it and care for it, from the youngest to the oldest. The diagnostics and workshop DERMAC provided us with made me realize that due to the type of soil (limestone) we have in our community, a latrine that is not properly cared for and managed can spell disaster for the whole community. The leachate coming from the latrines could pollute our water and even our food.

My family is working hard to improve our quality of life, but something like this can worsen it. We produce honey, we raise sheep and chickens, and my wife has a vegetable garden behind our house. We’ve learned many things, and we thought that we knew enough about the dry latrines, but now I realize that we still have much to learn.

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A day without coffee—and everything that it represents—would imply the cancelation of my identity, of history, of our origin, our cultural expressions. It implies no longer enjoying the birds’ song, the aroma of flowers, the freshness of local vegetation. It implies no longer listening to the falling rain and it, of course, has a significant effect on those of us who live in coffee-growing regions. For coffee-growing families, any economic activity is centered on producing, cultivating, harvesting the coffee. It would mean a totally different dynamic: the organizational processes; the time spent together between parents, children, siblings, uncles and aunts, grandparents; the way we share and enjoy our food together. It seems to me that this would have a tremendous effect on who we are, who we’ve been, and who we would like to be in the future. A future without coffee implies no more creative gatherings, artist gatherings, no more social gatherings in which coffee is the excuse for freeing imaginations, hopes, aspirations. Coffee is part of everyone’s life.

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Bueno, un día sin café, y lo que representa, implicaría para mí cancelar la identidad que tengo, de cancelar la historia, de cancelar nuestro origen, nuestras expresiones culturales. Implica negar el disfrute del canto de las aves, el aroma de las flores, el frescor de la vegetación de esta región. Implica no tener la posibilidad de escuchar cuando la lluvia cae y eso, desde luego, que tiene un efecto muy fuerte en quienes estamos habituados en habitar en esta zona cafetalera. Para las familias de origen, la actividad económica, pues, está centrada en producir, en cultivar, en cosechar el café, pues implicaría una dinámica totalmente distinta: los procesos de organización; la convivencia entre los padres, los hijos, los hermanos, los tíos, los abuelos; en el convite que se da en las fincas al disfrutar y compartir los alimentos. A mí me parece que, pues, eso tiene un efecto muy grande para lo que somos y para lo que hemos sido y también para lo que queremos ser en el futuro. Un futuro sin café implica no más reuniones creativas, no reuniones de artistas, no reuniones en donde los agentes sociales se congregan y  utilizan como el pretexto para poder dar rienda suelta a su imaginación, a su esperanza, a sus aspiraciones. El café es parte de la vida de todos.

The post A world without coffee: Eduardo Cervantes Magaña appeared first on Coffee Kids.

Our 25th anniversary celebrations appeared in a recent article in Fresh Cup. Says Ric Rhinehart, exeutive director of SCAA: “[Coffee Kids is] really focused on teaching people to fish, not handing them the fish.”

You can read the online edition here: Fresh Cup March 2013

The post In the News: Coffee Kids’ 25th anniversary appears in Fresh Cup appeared first on Coffee Kids.

My name is Rafael Elot Aquino. I am an education promotor for Self-Managed Development (AUGE).

How do I imagine a world without coffee? Even though we are often surrounded by coffee, when we are together as a family and there isn’t coffee, by that I mean the finished product, it’s really missed because we’ve grown up drinking coffee — we’ve grown up in the coffee fields. I think that coffee is the primary tool, I mean, it’s the foundation of the family as much in the region as it is for my own family. I come from a coffee-farming family. I think that coffee is our foundation. If there weren’t coffee, there would be a lot of problems because we wouldn’t be able to take care of certain needs, which, thanks to coffee, we’re now able to cover. I think that all of those who surround us would also be greatly affected. They receive a finished product, which is the coffee in all its varieties, ready to prepare. Beyond that, though, there is also a lifestyle, the coffee-farming lifestyle and, without it, the economics of the region would be very complicated.

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Mi nombre es Rafael Elot Aquino, promotor educativo de Desarrollo Autogestionario A.C. (AUGE).

¿Cómo me imagino un día sin café? A pesar de que vivimos en ocasiones rodeados de cafetales, cuando estamos en la familia y se carece de un café, o el producto terminado, es como algo que hace falta, particularmente en la mesa de la familia porque hemos crecido bebiendo o tomando café, hemos crecido en los cafetales. Yo creo que el café es la herramienta principal, yo digo que es  la base de la familia tanto de la región como de mi propia familia. Yo soy de origen de una familia campesina que se dedica al cafetal. Creo que el café es la base principal de ese sustento, entonces si el café no está creo que habría bastantes problemáticas porque particularmente no se podría cubrir unas necesidades, que, pues, ciertamente gracias al café se tiene. Entonces yo creo que también toda la gente que nos rodea y toda esta parte se afectaría mucho porque al final, pues, ya reciben un producto terminado que puede ser el café en sus distintas variedades ya para prepararlo, pero que atrás de eso hay un proceso, pues, de vida, de las familias, el mismo proceso del cafetal que sin él, la base económica en la región estaría bastante complicada.

You can see the AUGE interviews here:

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