By Aabiskar Thapa | Founder and MD
Dear Friends and Supporters,
Warm greetings from Sharing Seeds Organization in Pandeli Village of Nepal,
We are delighted to share another update from our community in Pandeli and the wider Sarangkot village area. With the continued support of our generous donors from around the world, we are gradually building a stronger connection between organic arabica coffee farming, local livelihoods, women’s empowerment, and responsible community-based tourism.
This year has brought several exciting developments—from a new community kitchen and new tourism opportunities to supporting coffee farmers with new plants and helping beekeepers manage their colonies during the annual swarming season.
Here are some of the highlights from our community.
New Community Kitchen: Creating Better Experiences for Travelers and New Opportunities for Women
One of the most exciting developments this year has been the completion of a new community kitchen next to our community café in Pandeli Village.
The kitchen is now being used by our local women’s team as part of our community tourism experience. It provides a much better and more organized space for preparing food for visitors and has made it easier for the women to participate in tourism activities.
For us, this is more than simply constructing a kitchen.
It is about creating a space where local women can turn their traditional knowledge and cooking skills into an income-generating opportunity. The new kitchen is also particularly important during Nepal’s monsoon season. Previously, running outdoor or food-related tourism activities during heavy rainfall was difficult. With the new facility, our community can offer a more comfortable experience to visitors and continue operating tourism activities for every season of the year.
Exploring a New Tourism Product: Nepali Cooking Classes
We are now discussing the possibility of introducing a Nepali cooking class experience for travellers visiting Pokhara.
The idea is simple: visitors will have an opportunity to meet local women, learn about Nepali food and culture, and prepare traditional dishes together with members of our community. We believe this could become a unique tourism experience that connects food, culture, farming, women’s knowledge, and community tourism.
We are currently assessing the equipment and small upgrades needed in the kitchen and some funds. Once these improvements are completed, we hope to begin offering the cooking class experience.
This will create another opportunity for our women’s group to generate income while allowing travellers to experience Nepal beyond the traditional sightseeing activities.
Sharing the Value of Coffee Tourism in Pokhara
In the first week of July, we were pleased to participate in an event organized by the Tea and Coffee Development Board in Pokhara. We had the opportunity to share our experience and ideas about integrating coffee tourism into small-scale coffee farms and creating sustainable income opportunities for farmers.
Small coffee farms often face challenges related to climate change issues, diseases, production costs, farm size and market access. We believe that tourism can provide an additional opportunity for farmers to earn directly from their farms.
During the event, we shared how activities such as:
Coffee farm visits, Coffee tasting, Seed-to-cup experiences,Community tourism,Direct engagement between farmers and travellers can help create additional value from a coffee farm.It was encouraging to meet participants who were interested in learning more about coffee tourism and how it can be practically implemented on small farms.
We were also happy to share our perspective on the growing value of coffee tourism in the international tourism market and the importance of creating authentic experiences that directly benefit local communities.
We hope to continue sharing our experience with farmers and tourism stakeholders so that more small coffee farms in Nepal can explore tourism as a complementary source of sustainable income.
Another Coffee Planting Season: Supporting Our Farmers
Every year, the beginning of the monsoon season also brings an important time for our coffee-farming community—the coffee planting season.As we have done in previous years, we once again supported local farmers by providing high-quality coffee saplings for new plantations and the expansion of existing farms.
This year, we distributed approximately 500 high-quality coffee plants to new and existing farmers in and around our community. Since the establishment of our project in 2020, we have continued this activity every year. To date, more than 3,500 coffee plants have been planted around the Sarangkot area through our ongoing support.For smallholder farmers, planting new coffee trees is a long-term investment. The trees will take several years before reaching full production, but they can provide farmers with a sustainable source of income for many years to come.
By supporting farmers with quality planting materials and knowledge, we are working toward building a stronger local coffee-growing community and encouraging farmers to see coffee not only as a crop, but also as part of a wider sustainable livelihood opportunity.
Our long-term vision is to connect these farms with specialty coffee, sustainable agriculture and responsible tourism, creating more value for farmers at the local level.
The Annual Honey Bee Swarming Season
Our beekeeping activities have also entered an important period of the year.
From start of the June through end of July, our bee colonies become particularly active as the surrounding environment provides abundant pollen and floral resources. During this period, bee colonies can become very strong and crowded.
If beekeepers do not regularly monitor their hives, the old queen and a large group of worker bees may leave the colony in a natural process known as swarming. As part of our regular beekeeping activities, we monitored our colonies carefully during this period and separated several strong colonies to help manage their population and maintain healthy hives in our community.
We also witnessed some colonies naturally swarming into the surrounding environment. Although swarming is a natural part of the honey bee life cycle, it reminds us of the importance of regular hive monitoring and good beekeeping practices. Supporting farmers with practical knowledge during these periods can help them maintain healthier colonies and protect their potential honey production.
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Your Support Makes These Changes Possible,None of these activities would be possible without the continued support of our generous GlobalGiving donors.
Your contributions are helping us invest not only in individual farmers, but in a community-based model of sustainable livelihoods.
We are particularly proud that our work is gradually bringing these different elements together. From Farming to Tourism, We Are Building a Community-Based Future. Our vision is to create a model where farmers, women, and travellers can all benefit from responsible tourism and sustainable agriculture. We believe that rural communities should not have to abandon their traditional livelihoods to benefit from tourism. Instead, tourism can help create additional value from what communities already have—their farms, food, culture, knowledge, landscape and hospitality.
Thank you for continuing to believe in our work and for helping us turn these ideas into real opportunities for local people.
With gratitude from the farmers, women’s group, beekeepers and entire Sharing Seeds community,
Sharing Seeds Organization
Pandeli Village, Sarangkot, Pokhara, Nepal
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