Growers First Inc.
P.O. Box 4227
Laguna Beach, CA 92652
Phone: 949.551.1085
Email: info@growersfirst.org
Latin America
Mexico
Beginning in 2000 in the remote mountain regions, Growers First began working with indigenous coffee growers. There are 12 villages currently served by the Growers First programs. These activities include:
- Creating and monitoring a fully developed cooperative structure with governance guidelines in place where growers aggregate their crops.
- Receiving of local government grants for constructing processing facilities such as wet milling and solar dryers.
- Partnering with other relief organizations to provide additional services i.e. working with freewheelchair.org to place more than 1200 wheelchairs.
- Training and assisting in organic certification as well as other techniques to maximize their crop yields and value, resulting in significantly greater incomes for growers
- Funding mobile medical & dental clinics.
- Development of a self sustaining nursery with over 20,000 seedlings used for crop expansion, intercropping and growing consumable crops.
- Providing transport vehicles for getting crops to market and other cooperative business activities.
In addition to the above, Growers First began sponsoring an annual leadership and pastoral conference. The goal of the conference was to “train trainers” – to provide training to community leaders so that they could go back to their villages and train others. Growers First also provides tangible assistance in the form of medical and dental care as well as other supplies related to education, health and environmental issues. Attendance has grown from around 200 the first year to an expected 5000 for this year’s 3-day event.
Honduras
Since 2004, Growers First has been working with 5 mountain regions to implement their social and economic programs. The programs have been extremely successful in creating a sustainable social enterprise which has greatly improved the quality of life for the region’s indigenous growers. The programs Growers First has implemented include:
- Establishment of a growers cooperative, governed by a leadership team consisting of educators, pastors, growers, accounting and other professionals. The cooperative has progressed to the point where they achieved legal status and as such have applied for and received funding grants from other organizations.
- Funding and training for establishing processing facilities which allows the farmers to participate in additional margins within the value chain.
- Training to achieve organic certification as well as other techniques to maximize their crop yields and value, resulting in significantly greater incomes for growers.
- Providing access to coffee buyers in the world market through Growers First contacts.
- Funding for transportation vehicles for getting crops to market and other cooperative business activities.
- Medical, dental and pastoral care and training
Further outreach and expansion to other communities is ongoing. The success of these programs has become widely recognized and many opportunities for replicating this model throughout the region are being evaluated for implementation.
