The Coffee Trust
We help indigenous coffee farmers improve their agricultural practices, diversify their incomes, and raise healthy families.
OUR MISSION
We help indigenous coffee farmers improve their agricultural practices, diversify their incomes, and raise healthy families.
We believe and trust that the communities we work with know what they need based on their culture, values, and priorities. Our job is to provide them with the framework to discover, implement, and share their own solutions. We collaborate with participants to design projects that lead toward self-management—the ultimate goal is for our partner organizations to take full responsibility for their projects and to become their own advocates.
We inform merchants and consumers about the intimate relationship between coffee and poverty, and actions that can be taken to change that reality.
We are actively researching ways to accomplish our mission while reducing and offsetting our carbon emissions.
OUR METHODOLOGY
Campesino a Campesino, or Farmer-to-Farmer, is a peer-to-peer training method practiced in many rural Latin American communities. The method relies on farmers sharing their knowledge and experience with each other to help improve agricultural, educational, and technical practices. It is a highly self-empowering method of teaching that involves a great deal of hands-on training and learning.
When trained by professionals, the experience for farmers is often, “I wish I were as capable and educated as they are.” But when trained by their peers, neighbors, and friends, the experience is much more that of “If he can do it, so can I!” Campesino a Campesino allows farmers to gain knowledge that directly applies to them, and which they can in turn share with their neighbors.