Founders’ Note: March 2026
Hi friends,
March has always felt like a month of beginnings — International Women's Month, the arrival of spring, and in Korea where I grew up, the start of a new school year. This year, I spent most of it in Mexico City, where the jacaranda trees were in full bloom, turning the streets violet in that quiet, unhurried way they do every year. It felt like a reminder that some things continue to grow and bloom regardless of what is happening around them — and in many ways, that is exactly how this quarter felt for us at Bean Voyage. It was not an easy one. But we are ending it with steadiness, gratitude, and more than a little joy.
Below, you'll find updates and reflections from our team. As always, thanks for being here!
In community,
Sunghee
Updates
3 WINS
Farmer School: Our Farmer School programs in Costa Rica and Honduras are wrapping up their MEL cycles. In Costa Rica, 250 producers have completed the program focused on income diversification; in Honduras, 50 producers completed the Market Readiness track - our pilot program. This marks our 6th year running Farmer School in Costa Rica — a milestone worth pausing on. As we close out the 2025–26 cohort, we are taking intentional time to deepen our learning from the past few years. In 2026, our focus in Costa Rica will shift toward Alumni programming — built for and alongside our 1,300+ graduates, while a Farmer School Mexico will be launching later in the year.
Women-Powered Coffee Collective: Coffee samples are beginning to ship, and larger lots are being confirmed. We are still receiving microlot samples and coordinating shipments — more updates coming soon.
Women-Powered Coffee Summit: We have received more than 170 applications from volunteers and speakers — a reflection of the energy and investment this community brings! We are also onboarding a Program Review Committee, made up of individuals from across the coffee value chain, to help us shape a WPCS program that truly resonates. We can't wait to introduce them soon.
1 CHALLENGE
The thing I've said most often this month is: I wish we had more time. The to-do list never ends, and the hours never seem to stretch far enough — which is probably a sign that we need more people. As a small organization, we're constantly navigating the tension between healthy growth and wanting to stay lean. Lately, questions of team structure, org charts, and financial sustainability have been weighing on me more than usual. When do you decide it's time to grow your team? What frameworks or resources have guided those decisions? We'd genuinely love to hear what's worked — and what hasn't.
1 ASK
Last call for WPCS 2026 Early Bird tickets! The Women-Powered Coffee Summit is returning to Chiapas, México, and this year's theme — Decolonize Coffee, Weave Solidarity — sets the tone for the conversations, connections, and experiences we'll be building together. If you've been on the fence, consider this your sign. We'd love to have you there.
Reserve Your Seats at WPCS 2026 Today!
Celebration
We have something big to share. Bean Voyage has won the Specialty Coffee Association's Sustainability Award in the Non-profit category — and honestly, we didn't see it coming, even after making the finalist list. This one means a great deal to us, because we know it belongs to this community — yes, you — who has believed in our work, and in us, since the very beginning. Thank you for being here! To celebrate it BV way, Abhi and I sat down to share updates from Q1 2026 & and how we are feeling about it all — watch the video here.
Something Personal
Q1 2026 was not easy for us at Bean Voyage. We began the year having lost a significant portion of our funding — a ripple effect of shifts in the broader philanthropic landscape that many organizations have felt since last year. We had to make difficult decisions while keeping our heads up, unsure of how long it would be before we found our footing again.
Through it all, one thing remained at the core of how we work: agility. We iterated and reiterated on our annual plan, working late hours and debating pros and cons, until we reached what is now the 7th version guiding our work.
And as we kept building, new doors started to open. Foundations that had supported us in the past stepped in to deepen their commitment. New connections were made. And slowly, we found ourselves returning to the path we had set out.
As I write this, at the beginning of Q2, we are in a genuinely better place — not fully recovered, but steady. And so much of that steadiness comes from the people around us: the team, the board, and the community of partners who held on and kept going alongside us.
This morning, Majo, our Country Lead in Costa Rica, opened our team call with something that stayed with me: "I want us to remember that we are resilient." I've been sitting with those words since. Remembering our resilience, I think, is an act of hope — for ourselves, and for the communities at the heart of everything we do. And hope is what makes us human, humane.
I want to leave those words with you too. Remember that you are resilient.
Thank you for reading, and for being here, with us and with one another.
Sunghee
