Coffee Kids, an NGO from a coffee-importing country, works to
improve the quality of life for children and families in
coffee-growing communities.
In Guatemala, Bill Fishbein, a specialty coffee roaster and
retailer in the United States, saw the connection between coffee
farming and poverty. He created Coffee Kids in 1988 so that coffee
businesses and consumers could give something back to the
growers.
Coffee Kids operates mainly in Costa Rica, Guatemala, Mexico and
Nicaragua. It works with local NGOs and other groups, such as a
women's health collective and democratically-run regional coffee
cooperatives.
Coffee Kids' annual budget is around $700,000. The funds are
raised mainly from businesses (coffee shops, roasters, etc.).
In-kind goods and services, individual coffee drinkers, coin-drop
collections, foundation grants and other sources make up the
rest.
Helping women
Coffee Kids' largest programme provides microcredit to women,
helping to build economic stability and promote diversification. It
helps establish microcredit groups that encourage saving and
provide access to small, low-interest loans to start or expand
small businesses.
The women's businesses include a general store, a midwife's
clinic and a pharmacy, a beauty salon, a food stand and a
pig-raising business. The women also receive training in accounting
and business management.
The groups use some of the interest on loans to cover their
expenses and channel the rest into a collective savings fund.
As each community bank's savings fund grows, the group borrows
less money from Coffee Kids and more from itself. Eventually, the
community bank becomes an official, independent credit cooperative
and the capital is recycled into starting a new group.
Education and health
Another programme gives scholarships to students and grants to
primary schools in rural, coffee-growing communities. Coffee Kids
helped a group in Mexico build a school from bricks made from
compressed coffee hulls.
In Guatemala, a women's health collective provides health-care
training to women in a region where there is only one doctor for
every 85,000 people.
A success story from Mexico
Ayahualuco is a small town in the Mexican state of Veracruz. Every
year, entire families, including small children, migrate to a
nearby coffee-growing region to harvest coffee. They live in
temporary camps and the children miss three months of school.
In 1997, Coffee Kids began a microcredit programme in
Ayahualuco. By 1999, several families were making enough money from
their small businesses that they no longer needed the extra income
from picking coffee. These families were able to remain in their
home community and keep their children in school.
ITC included Coffee Kids in its publication, Coffee - an
exporter's guide, among good examples of organizations active in
sustainability work in the coffee sector.
NGOs in the coffee sector These are just
a few of the many NGOs active in the coffee sector. A couple of
them are partly sponsored by governments and are not NGOs in the
true sense of the word. However, they are often referred to as NGOs
given their independence and not-for-profit profiles.
Morten Scholer is a Senior Market Development Adviser with
ITC.For more information about coffee, see http://www.thecoffeeguide.org