Brewista x The Chain Collaborative

Biblioteca Girasol. All photos c/o The Chain Collaborative.

Brewista’s partnership with an amazing organization, The Chain Collaborative, started in 2022. Brewista provided in-kind gear donations for their Community-Led Incubator Participants in Ecuador and Guatemala, and is supporting their Annual Holiday Auction that is underway from November 29th through December 9th. This year, proceeds from the Annual Auction will support one of their community-led development partners, Biblioteca Girasol, a youth-led community library in Nicaragua looking to build a very-needed second classroom to welcome more children into their space.

Brewista is also excited to partner on next year’s Community-Led Development Incubator Program as The Chain Collaborative welcomes their first cohort of  East African local leaders creating change in their coffee producing communities. Brewista’s partnership will support the participation of one of the amazing groups that will be part of this cohort, Kyaffe Farmers Coffee, from Uganda. One of their main goals is to encourage women to become innovators in the coffee industry, which we love so much.

The Chain Collaborative's (TCC) Mission

The Chain Collaborative's (TCC) mission is to co-create opportunities and strengthen capacities for community-led change in the coffee sector. They build relationships with local leaders in coffee-growing regions, cultivate their project design and management skills, and foster the development of their community enterprises for long-term sustainability. Most importantly, TCC's work allows global communities to combat intergenerational poverty and marginalization in the coffee sector on their own terms, and according to their own visions for change.

Kyaffe Farmers Coffee Building in Uganda.

About the Community-Led Development Incubator Program

The Community-Led Development Incubator is an 18-month collaborative learning experience for cohorts of local leaders in Africa and Latin America. The community-based organizations these leaders represent can be formal cooperatives, associations, or social enterprises, or otherwise informal networks.

After being accepted into the Community-Led Development Incubator, participants complete three program phases over the course of 18 months. The first phase is the Learning and Design Phase; the second, the Implementation Phase; and the third, the Peer Support Phase. These three phases allow participants to design a community-led development project, implement it with TCC funding and robust support, and report on its impact. Finally, participants are able to join an ongoing TCC-led alumni network of change-makers in the coffee sector.

Through a combination of mentorship, cohort co-learning and instruction, participants grow as leaders, improve their project planning skill set, strengthen their community ties, expand their networks in the coffee sector and complete a project that has been prioritized by their community. 

2022 Community-Led Development Incubator (Latin America)

In April 2022, TCC launched the pilot of their Community-Led Development Incubator Program with a cohort of six community-based organizations across five countries in Latin America. These groups have completed the Learning & Design Phase and are now implementing transformative projects in their communities. The focuses of their projects include improving agricultural practices, training on coffee quality, shade tree nurseries, organic fertilizer production, building a classroom for a youth-led library and a collective egg-selling business. We are very excited to see how these projects come to life over the next few months!

Kyaffe Farmers Coffee women's meeting.

2023 Community-Led Development Incubator (Africa)

In 2023, Brewista’s partnership will support the participation of one of the amazing groups that will be part of the East African cohort, Kyaffe Farmers Coffee, from Uganda. Kyaffe Farmers Coffee was founded in 2017 by Elizabeth Nalugemwa, with the aim to empower women in rural Uganda. They work to improve farmers’ quality of life and use coffee as a tool for community transformation. They achieve these goals by paying fair prices for women’s coffee and investing in their training in different areas of the coffee value chain. One of their main goals is to encourage women to become innovators in the coffee industry. In addition to their commitment to economic empowerment, Kyaffe Farmers Coffee also invests in educational opportunities for children in their community.

A student at Biblioteca Girasol

Biblioteca Girasol in Matagalpa, Nicaragua

Founded in 2018, Biblioteca Girasol is a community library in the coffee-growing community of Matapalo in Matagalpa, Nicaragua. The library’s 15 volunteer youth leaders and four coordinators act as administrators, program planners, librarians, teachers, students, and more.

Together, the local leaders of Biblioteca Girasol seek to expand educational opportunity, promote youth leadership, and offer a safe space for the community’s children to learn, grow and collaborate in Matapalo. Since their founding, the Biblioteca Girasol team has:

• Offered youth-taught classes to over 50 students, and lent books to over 100 children and other community members
• Launched a mental health initiative to provide workshops and counseling
• Grown a community garden
• Participated in youth exchanges with other change-making Nicaraguan teens

These activities to date have had an overwhelming impact in the community, and they now need a new classroom space in order to better accommodate their growing group of teens and children. Their current classroom only fits 30 people comfortably. This new space will allow them to engage more than one group per day, work with new populations - such as adult women - and hold community-wide events. Proceeds from the TCC Annual Holiday Auction will support building this very-needed second classroom to welcome more individuals into their space.