Improving school infrastructure is essential to provide students with a safe and motivating environment. This project focuses on renovating and upgrading rural educational facilities, ensuring that students in coffee-growing regions have access to quality learning spaces. Each improvement will contribute to a better educational experience, boosting both academic performance and community well-being.
Initiative #1: Campo Bello School Project
In addition, with your help we intend to carry out community development projects that target specific needs in education by providing essential supplies and infrastructure upgrades to Campobello school in the Huila community of Colombia. This community is home to 500 farmers and their families.
In addition, with your help we intend to carry out community development projects that target specific needs in education by providing essential supplies and infrastructure upgrades to Campobello school in the Huila community of Colombia. This community is home to 500 farmers and their families.
The school has requested support for the following purchases and upgrades:
- Educational materials, including materials for young children starting their education
- Furniture to store library books and materials
- Furniture for classrooms and library
- Sports & gym equipment for recreational activities
- Infrastructure upgrades for the library, including improving roofing and doors to fix leaks and overall improve the safety and comfort of the facilities
- Infrastructure upgrades to improve security for the schoolchildren
Here are a few videos our team took during our last visit to Huila in February 2023.
Initiative 2: Agricultural Training Program
The Agricultural Training Program aims to increase income levels for smallholder farmers by supporting them in producing higher quality coffee crops, thus gaining access to premium pricing. This will enable farmers to increase their income levels up to 240% above Fair Trade pricing. In collaboration with Progeny Coffee, we will organize quarterly agricultural training sessions throughout 2023.
The training objectives are:
1. Train farmers to enhance the quality of their coffee crops, resulting in a premium price from specialty coffee buyers, thus achieving our mission of reducing poverty within smallholder communities:
- - Starting with running soil samples, aiming to improve soil health using organic inputs, enhance crop quality, and promote carbon sequestration within the local ecosystem.
- - Train farmers on green coffee harvest and peeling practices, emphasizing equipment best practices to improve crop quality.
- - Teach farmers fermentation practices to produce specialty-grade coffee.
2. We have previously succeeded in reducing water consumption during the washing processes by up to +90%, while creating outstanding specialty coffee of 85+ points. With this initiative we're looking to further farmers' education on environmentally-friendly practices to reduce the negative impact of their farming activities on the local ecosystem, particularly water and agrochemical usage:
- - Improve water consumption and disposal practices
- - Train farmers on the best practices to reduce water usage during irrigation and washing processes
- - Increase the use of water filtration systems to recycle water
- - Decrease the disposal of polluted water into the local ecosystem.
3. Support farmers' compliance with the Beyond Trade Social and Environmental Standards:
- - Asses their overall conditions and alignment with our standards.
- - Support on implementing critical standards areas within the first week like eradicating child labor.
- - Develop a multi-year plan for each farmers to meet all standards
The program will mainly concentrate on standards 3, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, and 15.
