Grow Ahead - connecting coffee drinkers and coffee farmers
We've been a proud partner of Grow Ahead since the launch in 2013. Grow Ahead was launched as cross-cultural initiative of Progreso and Cooperative Coffees geared towards pre-financing fair trade coffee harvests. Its organizational structure consisted of partnerships between consumers and producers, roasters and importers, banks and NGOs.
After a re-launch in 2017, Grow Ahead now endeavors to support small family farmers as they address the challenge of climate change in their communities. Small farmer organizations in the developing world are historically under-resourced, with limited access to the capital needed to grow their organizations beyond their day-to-day needs. Grow Ahead intends to bridge the resource and funding gap and will work in four key areas moving forward:
1-Facilitating a revolving loan program for farmer-developed resiliency projects, such as soil conservation and yield-boosting compost operations.
2-Raising funds for annual regional Farmer to Farmer exchanges. These exchanges will facilitate farm leaders’ ability to share successes and resources. They will also produce written and multimedia resources, encapsulating farmer experiences and “takeaways” to share with other farmers.
3-Providing funds and resources for farm leader “multiplier” agroecology scholarships. Grow Ahead will raise funds earmarked specifically to provide scholarships for farm leaders and trainers to attend farmer-centric agroecology schools.
4-Raising funds for seedlings in agroforestry systems.
