Root Capital is delighted to
share with you a short documentary film highlighting the
important work of our partners and clients in Guatemala
and Nicaragua.
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Click here to watch the film on our website.
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The 15-minute video gives viewers
the opportunity to learn about Root Capital and meet the
farmers and artisans whose lives we touch, such as
Rolando Lazo, a small-scale coffee grower in northern
Nicaragua. Before joining SOPPEXCCA-a farmer cooperative
dedicated to Fair Trade and organic coffee-Rolando spent
much of his childhood as a migrant laborer on large
coffee and banana plantations. Having lost his parents
to civil war in the 1980s, he survived on the move in
run-down dormitories with miserable wages.
While his life stabilized when he
joined SOPPEXCCA five years ago, he still could not buy
his own land. Last year, a Root Capital loan to
SOPPEXCCA enabled Rolando to purchase a three-acre plot.
For the first time, he and his family can now grow their
own food and sell their own coffee. Our film captures
his hope for the future and the exciting prospect of a
better life for his children. "It is like being born
again," he says. "There was no other way of buying land
without [Root Capital's] financing."
The
video also introduces you to Root Capital's financial
education and training pilot in northern Latin America,
called Por Fin, which we're implementing in
partnership with Earth University in Costa Rica and the
Multilateral Investment Fund of the InterAmerican
Development Bank. Por Fin trains grassroots
business managers in financial management and basic
business skills so people with little to no formal
education can compete in the global marketplace.
Visit our recently-updated website
(www.rootcapital.org) to watch the film and to learn
more about how Root Capital has enabled farmers and
artisans throughout the developing world to change their
lives.
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Clients featured in the film
include:
SOPPEXCCA: A Fair Trade,
organic-certified coffee cooperative comprising 700 members
and representing 19 communities in the highlands of Nicaragua.
SOPPEXCCA is known for its emphasis on female empowerment; 40%
of its members are female, as is the organization's manager,
Fatima Ismael. The organization has played an important role
in helping affiliated women farmers gain titles to land and to
produce, manage, and market their own coffee. This
coffee is marketed as "Las Hermanas" (The Sisters) and was
featured by Peet's Coffee.
Manos
Campesinas: a network of farmer associations in the
western highlands of Guatemala, with a total of over 1,000
smallholder coffee producers. The region is culturally
diverse, with indigenous communities that showed great
resiliency during the country's 36-year civil war. Manos
Campesinas was founded in the 1990s, as a result of grassroots
organizing by progressive branches of the Catholic
Church. Today, it plays a critical role in the
productive activities of hundreds of economically marginalized
coffee growers.
Loma Linda: A
member Manos Campesinas, Loma Linda Cooperative (LLC) is a
worker-owned enterprise located in Quetzaltenango,
Guatemala. The community of Loma Linda was founded in
1977 by landless farm workers from surrounding large-scale
coffee plantations. Today, LLC represents the majority
of the community's family farmers. The cooperative
cultivates communal land to raise operating funds. Loma Linda
also runs a program that provides employment opportunities to
rural women, in which wives and widows of member farmers roast
and grind
coffee.
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