OUR IMPACT:
- Extension services
Our strength lies in our farmers. Because of this, Karangura Peak Coffee prioritizes our members, ensuring that their needs are being met. We particularly take pride in our farmer training program, which has helped coffee farmers familiarize themselves with international agricultural standards, becoming experts in Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) and sustainable farming techniques. In essence, our training program aims to empower our small-holder farmers—who often form the backbone of our communities—to improve their livelihoods through increased productivity and better collective marketing.
Our extension officer helping the farmer bend the coffee tree to initiate multiple branches from which the lowest and most healthy 2 are selected and maintained together with the original.
- Community access to safe water project
One of the central values of Karangura Peak Coffee is improving the livelihood of our local communities. When we discovered that some villages in our communities did not have basic access to safe and reliable water—an entirely preventable issue—we immediately began facilitating the gravity flow water scheme project, where storage tanks and water taps were constructed in villages within the Mahyoro community. Before this initiative, people were forced to walk long distances to access water at the river, which was dirty and not safe for drinking. Today, these communities have free access to clean and safe drinking water, which has made their lives much easier.
- Promoting girl’s education
As part of our mission to improve the livelihoods of local communities, Karangura Peak Coffee initiated and funded the construction of a girl’s bathroom at the Mahyoro primary school. Prior to this construction, the girls had been using the same facility as the boys, due to a lack of sufficient funding for such structures.
At Karangura Peak Coffee, we understand that proper hygiene and sanitation at school is crucial in creating an enabling environment for schoolgirls, allowing them to feel comfortable and focus on their studies. We strive to continue making such impact as our cooperative grows.
- Outreach programs in schools
Our education and outreach programs are inspired by our cooperative principals of education, training, collaboration and knowledge-sharing, as well as our continued concern for the community.
We recognize the value in building partnerships with schools and support collaborative educational programs that offer career guidance to students. In addition, we assist schools by building facilities and providing various resources, such as sports attire.
What is more, we involve parents in most of these programs to sensitize them on children’s rights and advocate for no child labor. Because of this, all parents have signed a child labor pledge in our communities.
Last but not least, as part of our farmer training program, the farmers receive basic advice on planning for their children’s education beyond the primary stage. As a result, the number of local children who go on to pursue professional careers has grown substantially compared to a decade ago.
- Nursery bed
Because we believe in being there for our farmers today, tomorrow and many years to come, our wish is to see them increase their farm size and production levels while also becoming more resilient. In order to ensure this, Karangura Peak Coffee focuses on increasing the coffee plant population by providing free seedlings from our nursery beds to our farmers. We believe that by doing this, we can achieve our dream of making our region a land of opportunity and prosperity—the ultimate goal of Karangura Peak Coffee.
Our Renewable Energy Project To Off grid Remote Villages in Our Coffee Community
This project was launched in early 2020 , it is aimed at distributing upgraded solar systems to struggling farmers in the most remote areas of our coffee community . Our farmers pays only 40 percent of the original price of the system and the cooperative contributes 60 percent. Money saved from use of solar has helped these farmers to transition from subsistence farming to agribusiness
After farmers switching from kerosene to solar energy, farmers are provided with agribusiness training through our farmer business school so that they can invest the saved earning in sustainable agribusiness instead of relying on rain fed agriculture
The project is also inspired by the fact that it is one of the key measures to reduce climate change and Karangura Peak Coffee looks at offering this contribution through sensitizing its farmers to use clean energy and avoiding burning, polluting dirty fossil fuels because we understand that this is the energy derived from natural resources which cannot be depleted over time and can replenished within a short time.
Karangura Peak Coffee feels the need to go beyond handouts and empower low income people to discover opportunities they can generate through solar units to boost their revenues and improve their livelihoods because we have been educating them for a long time on how they can raise themselves from poverty, we need to give them the longest ability to do that by giving them quality products and services as well that is going to last and educate them on how they can pay themselves with that.
Farmers Saving and Credit Scheme
Karangura Peak Coffee realized that many farmers in our remote Coffee communities had no access to financial instruments and this was also accompanied by another problem where farmers could typically receive the bulk of their income after harvest, and tend to gradually draw on this over the rest of the year to cover their expenses but without reserving anything for the future need. However, in the absence of financial accounts, saving money can be challenging and as a result, farmers may not have sufficient resources to facilitate the requirements for farm reinvestments and crop enhancement.
To fill this gap, Karangura Peak Coffee opened up a farmer’s savings and credit scheme where individual farmers can open savings accounts and have their cash savings kept, and this has been one way to overcome many financial constraints because farmers can withdraw their savings anytime in case of need and where necessary a farmer is given credit at only 2 percent interest per annum
