I'll name you if you survive this

So here's how the T-S coffee program works. We find a cooperative of farmers growing coffee that does not currently use a wet mill. We introduce ourselves and say, we can help you - if you want. If the cooperative decides to accept T-S help, we sell them a coffee wet mill for $10,000. They then pay that loan back over 3 years. Upon using the coffee wet mill for a year, the cooperative immediately starts to see profits increase.

Year 2 we introduce the agronomy program (what I do). The agronomy program shows the farmers - ok, now your profits have increased because you used a wet mill. Now, let us show you how you can increase your profits yet again by learning proper farming techniques - pest management, mulching, cover crops, pruning, rejuvenation, etc. Its pretty much free education which I think is certainly sustainable. Plus, they own the wet mill and thus own the project, so we can eventually take a step back and let them take over.

Farmers are paid twice by the cooperative. The first time - when they harvest their coffee and bring it to the wet mill, the coop pays them by the kilo for the cherry. The second time - at the end of the season, after the coop has found a buyer (Starbucks, Peet's, Bourbon (Rwanda), etc.) they then share the additional profits with the coop members based on their contribution to the overall harvest.

I heard this story at our Monday morning meeting. A coop in the East near Lake Kivu killed its expected profits (already much higher than pre-wet mill) this year by more than 50%. Awesome. So a large group of people in the coop decided to buy health insurance. This is the first time I've actually ever heard of rural farmers in East Africa buying health insurance. So, a few weeks later, the daughter of one of the members gets sick with Malaria and has to go to the hospital. It turns out she would have died without getting treatment, and wouldn't have received treatment without health insurance.

So, there you go. Working on increasing coffee profits, sometimes you forget how you really are affecting the country and people. The organization is having a positive impact and I'm glad to be a part of something like this.

So here's the twist - the girl who went to the hospital - her name roughly translated to English is, "I'll name you if you survive this." Apparently its a name Mother's give to children born during a rough delivery/pregnancy. The girl is 14 years old. She was born in April, 1994.

In April of 1994, the government of Rwanda called on everyone in the Hutu majority to kill everyone in the Tutsi minority. Over the next three months 800,000 Tutsis were murdered. This girl and her mother somehow survived the genocide and are now successfully and profitably running a small scale coffee plantation in Eastern Rwanda.