"After the Harvest" highlighted in New York Times

In case you missed it, New York Times environmental blogger Andrew Revkin highlighted "After the Harvest: Fighting Hunger in the Coffeelands" in a recent post. He begins, "There's perhaps no habit that more firmly illustrates the global nature of the modern human enterprise than drinking coffee." He goes on to provide information about the research conducted in Nicaragua, Mexico and Guatemala to understand the factors influencing food security in the region. He encourages readers to check out the film that highlights this research, the findings and some of the solutions.

Read the full article: A Coffee Seller Seeks to Cut Hunger Among Coffee Growers

Film Showings Continue to Spread!

The list of countries keeps growing for showing of “After the Harvest: Fighting Hunger in the Coffeelands”!
In March our list included the United States, Canada, Nicaragua, El Salvador, United Arab Emirates, and Italy.
We are excited to add the following two countries to the list:

• The film will be shown at the World Barista Championship in Melbourne, Australia to benefit Coffee Kids in October, and
• Will be included in the Addis International Documentary Film Festival in May in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
• “After the Harvest” won the Biodiversity Award at the Festival delle Terre in Rome, Italy “for the sustainable solutions proposed by the film, which enhance the diversification of cultures that can guarantee food security for small farmers and the chance to lead a decent life.”
• Throughout the spring and summer, the film aired on 10 main PBS television channels and 51% of all secondary channels across the United States including Massachusetts, Idaho, Iowa, Montana, Utah, Virginia and more.

Through Food Security Program Asnaini can Now Provide Her Children with Nutritious Food

Save the Children, an international non-profit organization, recently concluded their two-year Livelihoods and Improved Nutrition for Kids (LINK) project in two sub-districts in Bener Meriah, Aceh, Indonesia. LINK successfully improved access to key health, nutrition, and agricultural livelihoods inputs and services, and mobilized key actors locally, benefitting 5,735 households. Below is one women’s story about the most significant change she has seen in her life as a result of this project:

Asnaini is a mother of three children, and lives in a modest house in Desa Fajar harapan, Bener Meriah. She has an 11 month-old baby and two other two children, aged 8 and 11, who attend school. Her husband, like most other villagers, works on a coffee farm. Next to their house is a small garden of 20 square meters, containing celery, spinach and other vegetables.

Through the LINK program, Asnaini and some 2,500 other women received vegetable seeds, learned about composting, fertilizing, and pest control.

“My husband and I never thought that the small piece of land could be profitable to us,” Asnaini said. “We never made real use of it. We planted celery but because there was no fence, chickens would come in and pick and destroy the plants.”

“Now we plant spinach which only takes a month to harvest and we can earn around 300,000 to 450,000 rupiah (US$33 to US$50) per month. Through the home gardening program I can provide my children more easily with healthy nutritious food and also have a more consistent additional income which I can use to buy my children’s school uniforms and supplies.” Asnaini said.

Asnaini is not only happy to be able to provide nutritious food for her children but through her role as a posyandu kader (volunteer community health worker) she is more knowledgeable about childhood nutrition and children’s healthy development.

“I am really grateful for the training that I received from Save the Children about Posyandu management. As a kader I used to think that Posyandu is only about weighing the children, but now I know that there’s more to it. It’s an opportunity to provide counseling for the mothers about child health and, most importantly, I have an important role to ensure that children get the regular immunization.” Asnaini said.

"After the Harvest: Fighting Hunger in the Coffeelands" Wins Biodiversity Award!

"After the Harvest: Fighting Hunger in the Coffeelands" has won the Biodiversity Award at Festival delle Terre, a film festival sponsored by the Italian non-profit, Crocevia. The judges gave the award "for the sustainable solutions proposed by the film, which enhance the diversification of cultures..."

We are extremely gratified by the response to this film, both inside and outside the coffee industry. We hope this film continues to raise awareness of the vital issue of food security in coffee-growing communities. 

School Gardens: Tackling Food Security in Guatemala

In the rural and agricultural coffee producing communities where Pueblo a Pueblo works, most children spend their free time working in the fields alongside their parents harvesting coffee, avocados, and other local produce for commercial enterprises — leaving many families struggling to nourish themselves.  In these small-farm communities around Lake Atitlan in the Guatemalan highlands, food security and malnutrition are of grave concern.  Pueblo a Pueblo’s school garden project is supporting these families by providing the essential tools and knowledge necessary to practice sustainable, small-scale food production.  From the school garden, children are learning about gardening and taking this valuable knowledge home to their families and parents, encouraging the re-establishment of family gardening and sustainable food sources in their homes and community.

This year has been an exciting one for Pueblo a Pueblo, as we broke ground alongside teachers, parents, and community members to establish school gardens in 3 new schools in the Santiago, Atitlan region.  What started as a small idea has become a large reality.  The Organic School Garden Project is now being implemented in 6 municipal elementary schools, and it complements a school lunch program in each school.  Together, these programs form an integrated approach to school health and nutrition that provides 1,152 children with gardening and nutrition education and daily nutritious meals. Through our program, elementary school children are getting their hands dirty and exploring themes like garden maintenance, composting, and nutrition alongside energetic staff from the local villages. In each of our 6 gardens, worm compost bins, rain water catchment systems, and other gardening technologies keep the children engaged.  They are learning about cultivating, caring for, harvesting, consuming, and composting their own garden produce. This, together with a school meal, is keeping them food secure.

This year, the Organic School Garden Project continued to grow in size and impact, through new project implementation strategies, a new garden curriculum, expanded community involvement, and monitoring and evaluation systems. The garden project also expanded its reach this year as teacher training classes were held in 10 municipal schools in the region, providing them with the skills and seeds necessary to establish their own school gardens. These workshops focused on ways in which school gardens can be employed as a teaching tool and on ideas about how to transform small available spaces into creative urban garden areas.

In the coming year, Pueblo a Pueblo will expand the Organic School Garden Project and teacher training, providing new coffee communities with the tools they need to enable future generations to be healthy and food secure.   We envision this Edible Education as part of the core curriculum of every school we partner with. If we can provide every student with a nutritious lunch and interactive experiences in the classroom and the garden, we have the power to transform the health and values of these indigenous children and their families.

Denise Henderson is the Manager of Corporate and Foundation Relations at Heifer International. Below, she writes about her recent experiences visiting Heifer projects:

"For several years through a partnership with Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Inc. (GMCR), Heifer International has been committed to fighting hunger and seasonal poverty in coffee growing areas, most notably in Mexico and Central and South America.

Through its work, Heifer conducts agriculture and livestock programs that enable farmers to achieve food security, improve yields and generate revenue by diversifying crop and animal production. Heifer applies improved farming techniques and helps farmers bring products to market through its community-based approach.

In the past few months, I have had the opportunity to see the partnership between Heifer and GMCR in action, both in the field and here in the United States.

In February, I traveled to Honduras with a group of Heifer International staff. While visiting coffee farmers in Marcala, our group observed a distinct difference between families who had the good fortune of participating in a Heifer program designed to address food security and income, and those who didn’t. The families participating in the Heifer projects we visited were healthy and well fed.

In contrast, it was difficult to bear the sight of visibly undernourished residents and their animals that grazed on patches of grass wherever available…usually on the side of a narrow, crooked road with lots of cars and trucks going by.  We were alarmed when our driver screeched to a stop to prevent hitting a cow stopped in the road.

While we were able to see only a few coffee farmers, it was apparent the great struggles of many who provide one of our greatest pleasures – a good cup of coffee - must experience each year. I’m proud to be part of the Heifer-GMCR partnership working to end seasonal hunger and poverty in this part of the world.

In April, I was part of a delegation of Heifer International representatives who attended the Specialty Coffee Association of America (SCAA) event in Portland, OR. 

While at SCAA, we were awestruck by the collaboration beginning to form.  Global non-government organizations are beginning to consider collective impact and what it might look like to work together. Competing companies are joining forces to help their coffee producers, for the good of their farmers and their coffee supply chain. Individual agendas are being abandoned in favor of a collective approach to improve hunger and poverty during “the thin months.” It seemed that all are beginning to understand that there won’t be great coffee if there are no coffee growers.

We at Heifer are very happy to be part of the solution of addressing hunger in the coffeelands, and we look forward to our continuing relationship with those in the coffee industry who share the same ideals." 

Coffee Kids: Continuing the Dialogue around Food Security

In last month’s email newsletter, we discussed bringing you stories from NGOs and industry leaders focused on improving food security in the coffeelands. Coffee Kids is one such organization that works with coffee-farming families to improve their lives and livelihoods. Below is an update from Coffee Kids on their efforts around this topic within the specialty-coffee industry and coffee communities.

"The premiere of the documentary “After the Harvest: Fighting Hunger in the Coffeelands”at the Specialty Coffee Association’s 2011 Symposium in Houston last year spoke to a topic to which Coffee Kids has long been attentive: seasonal hunger and food insecurity within coffee growing communities. In addition to continuing the crucial dialogue instigated by the premiere, most notably at this year’s SCAA event in Portland, OR, our food security campaign continues. We have committed to raising $50,000 for food security projects by the end of 2012. These funds will go towards projects that enable coffee farming families to improve their nutritional well-being and increase communities’ capacities to ensure an adequate supply of fresh, local food, minimizing the impact of rising global food prices.

Beginning in 2011 and continuing through 2012, 45% of the projects we have supported have improved (and continue to improve) the food security of coffee growing communities. These projects, always developed in conjunction with the communities themselves, range from worm-composting modules and education to the establishing of family vegetable gardens to comprehensive health and nutrition programs. The projects are diverse and wide-ranging and are always attentive to the needs and goals of the communities choosing to implement them.

All our food security projects will take place in Mexico this year, where despite the country’s relative wealth, food insecurity poses a pressing issue in rural communities, rendering the country vulnerable to food crisis in coming years. Currently, we are developing 5 projects in Oaxaca, 2 in Veracruz and 1 in Chiapas – all regions where sustainable food futures are at risk. And we plan to expand our programs to additional countries as more communities seek to become involved.

Some of the greatest successes of 2011-12 so far have been projects in worm-composting. The example of the Worm Composting and Gardening project, being run by program partner, the December 5th Coffee Producers Network (RED 5), in Oaxaca, illustrates how much can be done with just a small investment. In just one year, the group has set up worm-composting bins for 39 participating families and generated more than 15,000 pounds of compost, which they use in their family vegetable gardens. In a region of Oaxaca where topsoil depletion is a grave problem, the worm-composting project provides opportunity to replace essential soil nutrients, allowing farmers to increase vegetable production both for their own consumption and to sell in local markets.

Another exciting initiative is the Community Participation in Food Security project being run by partner TCPI (Everything as Indigenous People). Currently in very early stages of development, the project will directly strengthen the subsistence farming systems of 25 families in the community and will over the coming years be rolled out to the entire community. By improving agroecological practices, the participants will increase their food production and recuperate the soil’s fertility, protecting it from further erosion. The project has been endorsed by local authorities and community members have expressed excitement at the opportunity to improve their subsistence yields while also increasing soil fertility, which will enable them to pass on both agricultural traditions and a better life to future generations.

As our approach to improving lives and livelihoods is always holistic, in addition to food security, Coffee Kids continues to develop projects in the parallel areas of healthcare, education, capacity building, and income diversification. With an approach that integrates all these areas of social development, we know a better food future, and coffee future, can be achieved."