Coffee Kids, Inc.

Our goal is to support projects that become self-sustaining and no longer require financial support from Coffee Kids to continue. We put emphasis on long-term support to ensure that our partners have time to create well-structured projects that truly serve the community. Partners who graduate from Coffee Kids remain in our network and serve as resources for other partners.

Every coffee-farming community is unique; as such, each Coffee Kids project is unique. Coffee Kids has created a structured plan for project evaluation that consists of four main components: written project proposals, written reports, annual site visits, and ongoing email and phone correspondence with project coordinators.

Project proposals provide the guidelines for each project and its anticipated results. The proposal form requires partners to provide detailed information, including the short- and long-term objectives, a plan for measuring project success, a calendar of project activities and a detailed budget.

Partners submit three reports per year (May, October and December). These reports include information about activities, progress on project objectives, and how grants funds were spent.

Report forms are designed to address specific details related to Coffee Kids’ five project categories: economic diversification, health care, education, food security and capacity building.

We evaluate progress by comparing the report forms to their approved project proposals. Coffee Kids international program coordinators work with partners to obtain any clarifications or additional information.

The third aspect of our plan is a project site visit. During these visits, Coffee Kids’ staff members observe project activities first-hand, interview participants and conduct focus groups, meet with the board of directors of our partner organizations, and work with project coordinators to address concerns or challenges. This personal contact plays an important role in maintaining trust and communication with partner organizations.

Finally, on-going communication with our partners via email, phone, and Skype allow our program staff to keep a finger on the pulse of the projects and encourages project coordinators to keep us informed as they progress toward their objectives.

Coffee Kids has been supporting coffee farmers as they confront quality-of-life issues for 25 years. We began working in Guatemala in 1988 and have since expanded our programs into Mexico, Nicaragua, Honduras, Costa Rica and Peru.

Coffee Kids connects coffee-farming communities to the financial resources required to implement projects by collaborating with local nonprofit organizations or the social branch of a coffee cooperative. These local organizations have the technological expertise to implement projects and the geographical and cultural advantage to provide consistent training and follow-through with project participants in each community.

Our partnerships are based on trust and transparency and include solid and ongoing communication about both the organization itself and the project, including project participants and each participating community. We work closely with these partner organizations to ensure proper support and training for each project in each community.

We do this through consistent communication as well as on-site visits with each partner every year. We use the information and experience gathered from these visits to inform our supporters of the initiative, progress and success of these projects.
Coffee Kids works with partners to help achieve a level of sustainability that will allow them to continue implementing projects without the requirement of financial support from Coffee Kids. Our goal is to transform local organizations, enabling them to independently reach more communities and deliver greater impact. We recognize this is a long-term process and therefore support our partners often for as many as 15 years.

Over the past 25 years, Coffee Kids has reached more than 350,000 people—that's 230,000 families—from over 800 communities in six countries in Latin America. Two of our partners, Fundación Hijos del Campo in Costa Rica and the Center for the Support of the Popular Oaxacan Movement in Oaxaca, Mexico, graduated from Coffee Kids, meaning that they reached sustainable status and no longer need outside support.

Over the years, we have learned the value of collaboration. Projects must come from the communities themselves. Coffee Kids' job is to support the project-planning and implementation process through funding and project monitoring and evaluation. Success comes from the ground up. Once a program partner reaches sustainable status, they continue to work with Coffee Kids by training and advising other Coffee Kids partners. The result is a supportive community in which information and long-term success is shared.

The need is great and conditions will only worsen as climate change and its effects wreak havoc on coffee communities. It is our hope that we will be able to expand our reach into additional communities and countries so as to provide support, preparation and resources for sustainable development to those who will be most affected by these changes.