3,000 Guatemalan Farmers Graduate from Poverty

We are happy to report that we have launched our Regional Program to help coffee-farming families graduate from poverty in San Cristóbal, Cobán, and Carchá, the three major coffee-producing municipalities in Alta Verapaz, Guatemala.

First, we completed the baseline assessment of the region.  This will help us to evaluate the changes we see in the region’s coffee communities as the program progresses.  We will do a similar assessment of the region at the end of each program year and compare the results to the baseline data.

Our team in Guatemala recently completed the first two activities of the project.  Activity one is the foundation of our project as it lets farmers take the lead in defining the practices they will adopt to increase their income from coffee and conserve their mountainside farmland.  Municipal officials convened farmer representatives from each coffee-producing community to a workshop to define the practices.  SID’s staff facilitated the meetings and then prepared simple descriptions of the practices that were defined so municipal actors can use them to establish widespread knowledge.  We conducted one meeting in San Cristóbal, one in Cobán, and two in Carchá because it has significantly more coffee-farming communities.

For activity two, we began to meet with municipal actors, such as rural radios, school teachers, and other NGOs that will work to promote knowledge of the practices and support their adoption.  In our meetings with the municipal actors we designed the following promotion plans:

• Primary school teachers will discuss the practices in PTA meetings, which are attended largely by women. 
• Rural radios will broadcast knowledge of the practices and reports on those that know and adopt them.  One rural radio station agreed to produce a video to help educate the farmers about the practice and encourage their adoption.
• Other NGOs will promote knowledge of the practices when they go to rural communities.

In early 2019, SID will start activity three by planning and conducting demonstration fairs in centrally located communities so farmers see and try the practices. 

We will also begin activity four by meeting with communities and selecting leader communities.  Leader communities are those that agree to:

• Adopt all the practices to increase productivity, price and income from coffee.
• Select a man and woman from their communities to be trained by SID to provide technical assistance in all the practices.
• Pay a small fee directly to these promoters for the assistance.
• Evaluate their results at the end of each year.

 Thank you for partnering with SID and the the coffee-farming families to help them make a sustainable living. 

Links:

• Check out SID's website
• Check out SID's GuideStar Profile