2020: A Year in Review - Care Trade Program
2020 brought a lot of interesting challenges for all around the world, and like many, we spent the year doing a lot more than we could have imagined at the beginning of the year. Following are our highlights from our Care Trade program in 2020.
After piloting our Care Trade program for the past four years, we felt ready to scale our programs in 2020. This was going to be the year when we would hire facilitators (a.k.a Care Facilitators) across the country, and establish a deeper regional presence. However, with the onset of COVID-19, we were limited to organizing our trainings virtually. While teams around the world were downloading zoom and hangouts to organize these sessions, our team was limited by the reality that most of the smallholder women farmers in our network do not have access to those tools. Shortly, our team re-grouped and researched a variety of online training models, and discovered a program that was led by MIT-GOV/LAB a few years ago to use Whatsapp to provide training in local communities.
Fast forward to April 2020, we launched COVIR-20, a virtual learning program for smallholder women coffee farmers to continue participating in Care Training, using low-cost, highly-accessible tools such as Whatsapp. Every week, our producers connected via Whatsapp to learn about a variety of issues - from post-harvest practices, to exportation, and finances. Initially, we were worried if virtual learning would limit our producers to successfully complete the program. Instead, we witnessed a 78% knowledge retention rate, and 90% of the producers responded to a survey saying that they would take another virtual course with Bean Voyage. As a result of this success with a pilot group of 67 producers, we received the generous contribution of the Canada Fund for Local Initiatives and CoopeAnde to scale the program for 300+ smallholder women farmers from seven out of eight coffee producing regions of Costa Rica.
Secondly, in 2020, we launched our official Care Market program to connect smallholder women farmers with market partners around the world. Thanks to previously established relationships, and some new found friends in the coffee sector, we were able to build key partnerships with roasters and buyers around the world - from Bean n’ Bean Coffee (USA), Demello Pahleta (Canada), to Girls Who Grind (UK), Torrefaction Papillions (France) among others.
Additionally, in 2020 we started building up the Care Engagement program, to provide advocacy to push forward the agenda for smallholder women coffee farmers among policymakers and key stakeholders in the sector. As part of the process, we build a strong relationship with the Coffee Institute of Costa Rica (ICAFE) which has been a big supporter of our initiatives since 2019. In 2020, we signed a MOU with ICAFE to collaborate in exchanging ideas and collaborating on crucial projects to reach more smallholder women through the ICAFE network in the coming years. As a first step, we have initiated conversations with the ICAFE team to build a gender policy for their regional offices and cooperative partners.
Finally, 2020 was also the year when we decided to widen our focus to look at the well being of smallholder women coffee farmers. COVID-19 caused a series of challenges for smallholder women’s well-being, so right off the bat, we launched an online fundraiser to support 30+ families in the southern part of Costa Rica with basic relief during COVID-19. As the community depended heavily on coffee tourism to sustain themselves, the ban on travels meant that the producers were unable to provide for their families. As a result of our community of supporters, we raised around $3,000 to provide meals and basic necessities for 30 families (160+ individuals) to last for four months. Additionally, when the Costa Rican borders closed and caused a labour shortage for coffee pickers, we launched the Harvesting Care program in collaboration with ICAFE - through which, we were able to connect smallholder producers with coffee pickers within Costa Rica that were looking for more short term employment opportunities.
Looking forward, we are hoping to deepen our focus on each of the four elements that make up Care Trade - Care Training, Care Market, Care Engagement, and Care Support. If you would like to learn more about any of these programs, or see a good fit for collaboration, please do reach out to us, as we’re looking to scale our efforts in the coming months!