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LWR Delegation to Nicaragua |
Coffee with a Conscience – The Lutheran Way!
In early January Lutheran World Relief (LWR), Equal Exchange and the Center for Global Education teamed up to visit Nicaragua with a group of Lutheran church activists and students. Our stay with the families of La Reyna, a rural coffee farming community, was a highlight of the trip for all of us. Coffee farmers in La Reyna are members of the CECOCAFEN cooperative, one of Equal Exchange’s trading partners. Families active in CECOCAFEN’s Ecotourism Project hosted us and spoke to us about how their cooperative and Fair Trade prices have helped them stay on their land and stay organized. Valeria Ochoa Sevilla, a CEOCAFEN farmer, told us that Fair Trade prices, much higher than conventional prices in recent years, have helped her pay off a loan on her new, sturdy cement block house. She also told us how the cooperative has changed how she and other farmers work: “Before, we worked on the plantations....we hardly earned anything….The most important thing about the cooperative is that we work organized together. In the times before [the co-op] we didn’t work that way. With organized work we work better …. Unity makes strength.”
As way to diversify community income CECOCAFEN has developed the Ecotourism Project, which trains community youth to be guides and helps families learn how to host visitors. We enjoyed picking coffee and then hiking further up the mountain to see howler monkeys with Armando, one of the young guides. LWR Small Farmer Funds, collected from a portion of the sale of every pound of fairly traded coffee, cocoa, tea and sugar purchased through the LWR Coffee Project, have provided start-up and training resources for the Ecotourism Project. Imelda Rayo, a member of the CECOCAFEN cooperative who lives in La Reyna, said to us, “It’s very important that people come visit us so that they can go and spread the message of our cooperative. When our visitors leave … we feel satisfied because we know that they are taking our message home.”
You can visit: http://lwr.org/studydiary/ to see our trip diary and photos.
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