Agros Blog

Today, Saturday, May 14, is World Fair Trade Day. In that spirit, I recently dusted off a college paper I’d written on Fair Trade. Re-reading pages of charts and theories, I was struck by the number of similarities with Agros.

Fair Trade, as we see it today on our supermarket shelves, began with coffee. And not just because so many of us depend on it for our morning routines! Coffee grows best in mountainous regions around the equator—and needs a lot of TLC; the required degree of attention makes coffee best suited for growing by small family-farms, not large multinational corporations. In fact, around 70 percent of the world’s coffee is produced by poor family farmers in the developing world.

That sounds great for the farmers, right? We, in coffee-saturated Seattle, daily cough up $4 for one latte; but family farmers historically have seen almost none of that. Instead, they have sold their beans to intermediary agents. Known as “coyotes,” these agents cunningly colluded together, so that producers in a given region have literally only one buyer for their products; the buyer named whatever price they wanted, then sold to big coffee corporations at exorbitant profits. Year after year, farmers have sold their coffee for less than the cost of production.

So how do people stay “in business” if their products are purchased for less than the price of production? Here in Seattle, you close up shop and go work for someone else! But imagine the mountainous regions of Nicaragua or Guatemala, where coffee has been the principal livelihood for generations; imagine winding mud roads that prohibit access to new markets; imagine low literacy and education that prevent new business ventures. As a result, we see inescapable poverty, loan sharks, migration, human rights abuse, slave labor, indebtedness, hopelessness, landlessness…  And that’s the part of the story where Fair Trade NGOs stepped in to restore hope and opportunity to the world’s poor!

…Wait, that sounds like Agros’ vision statement…

What is Fair Trade’s ultimate goal? Superfluity. That is, to build sustainability and capacity in cooperatives, freeing rural producers from the cycle of poverty so that the NGO is no longer needed! Through fair trade, farmers negotiate directly with contract buyers;  get fair, sustainable prices for their products; and pass on the blessing to other farmers still in poverty.  …sounds a lot like Agros!…

Though the primary focus of Agros’ work has been village development with landless farmers, there are hundreds of families around Agros communities who continue to live below the poverty line, even though they own small plots of land.  With just a marginal increase of services, Agros could provide training, technical assistance and credit opportunities to these families, as well. And, like a symbiotic relationship in nature, the village and surrounding families would nurture each other:

• the village, as a center for community knowledge and training;
• the surrounding families, as leverage for sustainable economic opportunities—securing more profitable contracts (with an increased volume of agricultural production in cooperatives), conserving natural resources and critical watersheds, and collectively advocating with local authorities for more services in the region.

Agros staff first extended training and credit to neighboring, small land-holding families in Nebaj, Guatemala, when Atlas Coffee, a Washington-based coffee export company, offered a contract to the Agros village of Trapichitos—if they could come up with enough volume of coffee.  So, families throughout the entire region were trained to cultivate their land efficiently and sustainably, and to negotiate cooperatively with the exporter. As families and communities have gained more experience and confidence in making decisions and in managing the project, Agros’ involvement has decreased so the project can become self-sustaining.  The entire region has experienced an economic lift, attracting new investors, contracts, and microfinance opportunities, as well as infrastructure improvements by the municipal government.

This regional work both provides new economic opportunities to neighboring poor families and strengthens the sustainability of Agros villages—by addressing environmental degradation and facilitating better commercial contracts for agricultural production with increased volume.  In that particular regional coffee contract, a total of 18 communities are working together.  Coffee purchased directly from Agros farmers by Atlas Coffee is now sold throughout Washington—from Street Bean, a job-training coffee shop for street youth, to an executive suite at the Microsoft headquarters—and exported around the world by local roasters.

Today, Agros facilitates a number of regional cooperative projects in our villages and the surrounding areas, including coffee, chilies, snow peas and other vegetables—with plans to continue cultivating these symbiotic relationships in the future.

So, on World Fair Trade Day, I plan to raise my cup of Fair Trade coffee to celebrating the hard work and accomplishments of the growing Agros family!

With Mother’s Day coming up, this weekend is a good time to reflect upon everything that mothers do to strengthen their families and communities. At Agros, we’ve learned that investing in women is a necessary component in our holistic community development model. Not only are women successful entrepreneurs, but their commitment to reinvesting profits into their families also reaps rewards for the larger community around them. Our recent discussion of Community Banks, and the small businesses that women have launched because of them, highlights the vital difference that women can make in Agros communities.

This has been a great success of Agros’ development model, because it allows women to provide, in every way, for their families as they all journey out of poverty together. Another way in which women help to provide for their families is by supplying them with the proper nutrition they need through meal preparation. However, this can also be a major health issue, as an article featured last week in the Huffington Post highlighted.

The article pointed out the dramatic health impact that unclean cooking can have on women and children in the developing world; non-communicable diseases, which include cardiovascular disease, chronic lung diseases, and cancer – cause two out of three deaths in the world today, and 80 percent of those occur in developing countries. In lower-income countries air pollution from the use of solid fuels for cooking and heating is the biggest risk factor for chronic lung diseases such as COPD.

In Central America, where Agros works, more than 80 percent of rural families generate heat and prepare food using traditional open-fire cook stoves, which unfortunately compromise the health, quality of life, and environment of this population. These tragic side effects are found primarily among women and children due to the fact that women often spend the most time cooking, and that their children are often present for this task.

Thankfully, Agros recognizes that in order to promote family health, we must make clean cooking a priority. We encourage our communities to build efficient cook stoves, which produce more heat with less wood than open fire cooking and also cook food faster so women have more time for other activities.

By building clean stoves that allow smoke to clear out of the home, community members can minimize health risks for their families. It’s vital that we make this a priority, along with accessing education, training, and growing productive crops – as these families journey out of poverty.

How can you help? In our gift catalog, we offer a Family Health Package consisting of an efficient cook stove and latrine, which allows families to promote healthier practices in their homes. Of course, there are plenty of other gift opportunities that also allow you to celebrate and honor your mother by investing in a rural woman. As you celebrate Mother’s Day this weekend, take the time to reflect with gratitude on your life, and how you can honor your mother by empowering a woman in Central America or Mexico:

• Family Health Package
• New Mother and Baby Kit
• Women’s Small Business Loan
• Flock of Chicks
Learn more at the Agros One Seed Gift Catalog!

Agros is an organization dedicated to continuous learning. One of the most important ways we learn is by closely following the results of our work through a system of program Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E). Though there is unanimous agreement of the importance of M&E among development professionals, there is no single industry standard for how it should be done; monitoring development work requires responsive growth as technology improves and experts develop increasingly refined understanding of best practices.  Agros’ M&E system is relatively unique due to its emphasis on participatory methods of evaluating; in contrast to top-down systems, Agros intentionally invites the reflections of the families it serves through focus group dialogues.

Agros formalized its Monitoring and Evaluation system in 2006, though an informal system that included Quarterly Village Updates started much earlier. Our journey toward the practices that exist today began in 2000, when Agros contracted an outside consultant to evaluate the effectiveness of our program.  As a result of that evaluation, we expanded our program model, designing a more holistic approach to sustainable development, including our current five-component development model.

In 2005, with support from a University of Washington graduate student, Agros began laying the groundwork for what our M&E system is today, which includes participative biannual family surveys and focus groups with village women, men, and leaders to measure twenty impact indicators and learn more about the outcomes of our work. In the last two years, Agros began tracking eight of those indicators on an annual basis, for closer monitoring. Conducting M&E not only enables us to continuously strengthen our program, but also allows us to share with our valued stakeholders like you the ups and downs of development work.

In this avenue of stakeholder participation we are thrilled to share with you that, as a result of combined efforts from our staff and generous long-time partners, Agros will be launching a three-phase effort to refine and expand on our existing M&E system. In the first step of this process, an M&E expert consultant will be hired to review Agros’ work and reporting requirements and provide guidance to improve the M&E process.

As a result of the improvements to Agros’ existing M&E system, Agros will be empowered to deliver:

• More manageable and reliable data
• More effective programming with improved ability to identify strengths/weaknesses
• Increased transparency and accountability in communication to supporters

At Agros, we take monitoring and evaluation practices seriously.  We are excited to continue to improve how we evaluate our work, while upholding the participatory values that define us. Our goal is to better serve rural families in Central America and Mexico, and to provide you with more information over time about the impact you’re helping to achieve

Check out our annual indicators on each village update—click on “Our Villages” at the top of the page to get started!

Dear Agros Supporters, Partners, and Family,

After five incredible years as Director of Communications at Agros, the time has come to move on to new employment opportunities. I carry with me a profound sense of gratitude for having had the opportunity to walk alongside so many extraordinary families throughout Central America and Mexico; families who have graced us with their vulnerable and heroic stories of Desire. Suffering. Resiliency. And Hope.

We have all witnessed time and again how the stories of people who live and struggle in the developing world are simplistically reduced to caricatures of either pity or glorification.  This is particularly true when those stories are told for fundraising purposes.  On the one hand, pity is emphasized because of the enormous suffering these people have experienced.  On the other hand, they are over-romanticized and glorified as the most incredible people on earth due to their resiliency, hope, and generosity.

I do not mean to be cynical—at all.  I recognize that in many ways, these two emotional poles represent truth.  And as Director of Communications, Agros families have certainly given me cause to highlight both their suffering and resiliency.

But I also recognize that the deeper truths of any human story—as well as the truth of the Agros story–lie somewhere in the middle; in the narrative regions that speak to the fact that every human life is filled with complexity, wonder, conflict, and desire. And the tagline “ending rural poverty” can never be reduced to a single story, image, or video clip.

Over the years, Agros has learned that poverty is most comprehensively defined and understood through the concept of broken relationships.  For the rural poor, all of the essential connections and relationships that make up a healthy society have broken down: relationships with local municipalities; economic, education, and health institutions; the environment; cultural identity; and even family relationships break down as parents (and all too often, children) are forced to migrate in search of work just to survive.

Agros responds with a holistic development model built on the belief that these families have the capacity themselves to work their way out of poverty and build back these broken relationships—if given the opportunity to develop what is needed most:  farmable land, economic enterprise, and, most importantly, human dignity.

Another way of saying this is that for Agros, ending poverty is not just a phrase, a marketing slogan, or a speech to be given over a fundraising dinner.  “Ending rural poverty” IS the relationships our staff have with Tomasa, Diego, Teresa, Noemi, Mateo, Serbando, and countless other Agros families.

There are no easy fixes, no magic bullet, and no single intervention that will make generations of suffering go away.  And yet, after 27 years of faithful, hard work throughout Central America, Agros has stayed true to its original promise of empowering entire communities to work their way free from generations of poverty.  In Agros villages, I have heard families say again and again, “In our suffering and poverty, we were forgotten, abandoned, left to die.  But then Agros came.  And Agros has kept their promise.  We are not the same as before.  We have hope and our children have a new future.”

In Agros villages, hope has taken the place of despair—for generations to come.

I think this is best summed up by the words of an Agros villager in El Edén, Nicaragua when I asked him to describe what Agros means to him personally.  Without pausing, he said, “To me, Agros is a mirror.  A mirror in which we’ve been able to see our face; we have seen that we have dignity and that we matter.”

I leave Agros with clarity: It has been one of the greatest privileges of my life to serve the families in Agros villages by sharing with you their stories of dignity and desire.  I have also been forever changed by witnessing the life-giving generosity of so many Agros donors.  And I think of the Agros staff and board as family.  Thank you—mil gracias—to each of you. I remain your most ardent advocate.

Yours in Land, Hope, and Life,

- Sean

The following was written by Rebecca Craig, Agros International Student Worker in the Communications Department:

Earlier this month I attended the Bottom Billions/Bottom Line conference presented by Seattle Pacific University. The conference examined methods of poverty alleviation and welcomed business and international development leaders from around the world as speakers. Among them was opening speaker Collin Timms, an enthusiastic entrepreneur with great commitment to poverty alleviation in India. As a founder and the current chair of Guardian Bank – a microfinance institution that has experienced great success with its programs targeted at women – he had much to say about the impact that micro-enterprise loans can have on rural women. As I was listening to Timms describe the significance this program holds for women and their communities, I became encouraged by the number of commonalities between his experiences and those of Agros’ Women’s Community Banks.

Agros uses microenterprise loans for women as an integral and hugely powerful component of our development model, often through the formation of Women’s Community Banks. The banks are typically made up of twelve to twenty women, who provide a support system for each other and mutual responsibility for repayment. Each member receives a six-month loan to provide startup capital for her business such as textiles, baking, and small animal husbandry with pigs, rabbits, goats, or chickens. Hearing Timms, a likeminded individual in our field, reiterate much of our success really inspired me to take a deeper look at why this program is so special and how it affects the women in Agros villages.

Women’s Community Banks are particularly powerful for a number of reasons. Most often the women we work with have not had prior access to credit, nor have they had the opportunity to try their hand at income generating activities. Being stuck in the ruthless cycle of generational poverty often means struggling to survive rather than striving to thrive. However, Agros breaks this cycle and within the context of land stability allows women the opportunity to create small businesses. These community banks allow women to forge their own path out of poverty, and to use what they are good at and passionate about for the support of their family.

Another powerful aspect of these Community Banks is that they allow women to dream! This is usually not a viable option whilst caught in the cycle of poverty.  But these women have the work ethic and desire to provide important supplementary income for their families; all they need is the training, capacity building, and start up finances to make their dreams a reality. Magdalena, a participant of the Women’s Community Bank in La Esperanza, El Salvador, is a great example of this: she used a loan and training to cultivate a bean crop and, with her profits, she bought a refrigerator in order to further her business.

“I can sell frozen chocolate bananas and other sweets. My dream is to start a chicken project and use my refrigerator to store chickens I’ve prepared for sale. I’ve already made a budget and calculated that I would make a profit.”

One of the reasons that Agros has integrated Women’s Community Banks into all five of the countries it works in is where the profit ultimately ends up. Timms reiterated this aspect of women’s small businesses by saying, “We find that the money made from these women’s microenterprise projects goes directly toward the family: toward better nutrition, better education for their children, and better lives overall.”  This reinvestment is important because it provides economic, educational, and health benefits for generations to come. This additional revenue also supplies a more diversified income for the family.

Additionally Agros has found that women make for a great investment; our repayment rates have been consistently at our set targets since beginning to program. This is due the intentional communal aspect of the banks, which build personal confidence as well as economic stability: ensuring greater success for both lenders and borrowers. Timms commented on how powerful this dynamic can be: “By creating groups for these loans, the women draw off each other’s strengths, and help to balance out one another’s weakness.” Looking to the example of La Esperanza, another member, Dora, highlights this phenomenon.

“We take care of each other since we can see who is really paying back their loan and want to be able to keep working together.  I hope that other women are encouraged and start their own bank as well.”

Through a partnership with Agros, the women of La Esperanza’s Community Bank have the opportunity to channel personal passions and ambitions toward their journey out of poverty. However, this is not an individual journey, it is one the women take together. This communal aspect is of the upmost importance to Agros as we work to break the cycle of generational poverty for entire communities through hard work alongside, and dedication to, one another.

As we celebrate Earth Day today, consider that for many families in the developing world, every day is really earth day.  For the billions who live in rural areas, their survival is entirely dependent upon the land.  Their access to food, shelter, and income is intrinsically linked to the earth.  And when that access to land is not secure, the cycle of generational poverty continues because of the lack of those resources.

At Agros, we believe that the first step toward upholding environmental sustainability begins with land ownership.  To that end, the Agros development model is focused on ensuring access to land, affordable credit, and technical training proven to support sustainable land stewardship.  For families who partner with Agros, this is the key to breaking that poverty cycle in a powerful way.

How can you help Agros families to be responsible environmental stewards, on Earth Day and every day?  Do your part by investing in rural families who employ sustainable agricultural practices today, so that future generations can continue to enjoy the land!

• Plant a dozen trees in an Agros community
• Give a toolkit to an Agros farmer
• Provide agricultural sustainability training
• Buy a share of an acre of land

Learn how else you can help at the Agros One Seed Gift Catalog!

Recent months have brought a staggering series of global tragedies. Though complex, these events are inextricably linked by at least one common theme: food. Weather and violence have destroyed crops and disrupted the supply chain for food around the world. With decreased supply, the price of food staples has increased dramatically since June.

Though we are relatively sheltered from the food crisis in the US, there may be one price increase you have noticed if you frequent Seattle coffee shops as much as I do: global coffee crops have been battered by unusually harsh storms, so the decreased supply has increased the price of our lattes. This small change for us hints at a harsh global reality: today, food prices are the highest they have ever been recorded.

In 2008, 870 million people were hungry in developing countries. Today, there are 925 million hungry people.  Since June, 44 million people have dropped under the poverty level in developing countries because of the increase in food prices.

The United Way of King County has named this week “Hunger Action Week”—a timely week of action, advocacy and reflection about local hunger. As we consider how to encourage our friends and family to participate in the week, we want to share how Agros partners take action on hunger every day.

Families working with Agros are protected from the shock of the food crisis through two core strategies: ensuring food security and focusing on economic productive capacity. Though the food price crisis has had a sobering impact in Central America— especially in regions like the Ixil, Guatemala, with a chronic malnutrition rate already over 60 percent—Agros families continue with hope and opportunity.

Food security is prioritized from the beginning of a village. Agros uses a staged entry process, where groups of families move on to new land in phases.  The first arrivals prioritize food production (planting, cultivating and harvesting enough corn and beans to feed the entire village) before work begins in infrastructure, housing, and economic activities. In October, I was blessed to meet the first ten pioneering families of Agros’ newest—and largest ever—village, Tierra Nueva, in Nicaragua.  They had set out on a courageous journey from all that was familiar to move to new land and prepare it for food.  To date, they have planted enough to feed the remaining 140 families for the first year and will be prepared to re-plant after the harvest.  This buffer of food security is possible through the support of Agros donors covering the initial investment in seeds and fertilizer.

Beyond the security of crops, Agros villagers work from the beginning for a steady income supply through diversified economic activities. Staff agronomists assist with crop development techniques that take advantage of local conditions, markets, and necessary inputs, protecting them when prices fluctuate or weather conditions cause harm. Every family Agros works with diversifies their income with at least three income-generating projects, including different cash crops, animal husbandry, and small businesses. 

Reflecting on Hunger Action Week, I echo the words of Christian author, critic and farmer, Wendell Berry: “Eating is an agricultural act.” Both as partners with Agros families and daily consumers of food, we are all intimately linked together in agriculture, hunger, and food.

Did you know that today is International Women’s Day?  It’s a great opportunity not only to celebrate the gains women have made in our own families and communities but also those of women around the world.

Agros has always recognized and supported the crucial role of women in building and nurturing thriving communities and families.

Consider how your support and advocacy for Agros has empowered women in Central America:

• In Agros villages, women now hold nearly half of all leadership positions, enabling them to have an active voice in the governance of their communities, many for the first time in their lives.
• Last year Women’s Community Banks expanded to communities in all five countries where Agros works, transforming rural farmers into savvy businesswomen who are educated about credit and savings.
• Many women have launched small businesses in areas such as baking, sewing, artisan crafts, and agriculture, providing additional income to support their families.
• Women in Agros villages are legally recognized on land titles in their communities, ensuring that they have equal ownership rights to their land as their husbands.  In this region, this is highly unusual.
• Many women have completed the training necessary to serve as the community health promoters in their Agros villages.

As we honor women around the world today, let’s reflect upon the incredible journey that the women of Agros have embarked upon to transform their communities.  We must also think about the opportunities that are still awaiting future generations of women.  Together, let’s help support their efforts by providing them with access to resources and the opportunity to learn and grow.

Please consider giving the women of Agros villages the gift of hope through a gift of:

• Women’s Small Business Loan
• Women’s Economic Initiatives Training
• Village Health Promoter Training
• Rabbits and A Flock of Chicks (for small business creation)
• New Mother & Baby Kit

Last year, Christina posted about a trip she led to the Ixil region of Guatemala with photographers and citizen-journalists from SalaamGarage.  Inspired by that trip, these journalists returned home eager to find a way to share their story and the incredible photographs they were able to take in Agros communities like Belén, La Esperanza, and Cajixay.

Thanks to their efforts, you can come see for yourself at at evo’s Times Infinity Gallery in Fremont at 8pm on Friday, March 4, 2011. In addition to displaying their photographs, the event will feature short talks by Amanda Koster of SalaamGarage, Sean Dimond of Agros, and a question-and-answer session with journalists from SalaamGarage.

The journalists will also present their recently published book: “Guatemala + Agros, Stories from Seven Citizen Journalists.” The book is available for purchase at the reception and online through Blurb (a SalaamGarage partner). Proceeds from book and photo sales will benefit Agros.

Admission to the gallery event is free as part of Fremont’s First Friday Art Walk.  We hope to see you there so you too can share in their transformative experience!

What: SalaamGarage / Agros Photography Exhibit
When: Friday, March 4th | 8-10pm
Where: evo Times Infinity art gallery | 122 NW 36th St Seattle (Fremont district)
Cost: Free

If you missed Friday’s opening event but would like to see the collection, it will be showing until March 25th at the Evo store in Fremont.  Hours are Monday through Saturday 11am to 8pm, and Sundays 11am to 7pm. Admission remains free, and all proceeds from sales of the book, prints, and cards will go directly to supporting the work of Agros. Thanks to the photojournalists of SalaamGarage for a great event!

Agros uses credit as a vital part of our holistic development model. Like many organizations creating a deep impact in impoverished regions, Agros leverages the power of credit—a “hand-up” instead of a “hand-out”—to build self-confidence, financial capacity, and long-term sustainability in our villages.

But not all credit is created equal.

Most of us have heard inspiring stories of entrepreneurs in impoverished corners of the world who, after receiving a small loan, were able to change their families’ story for good. Recent news stories, however, have revealed a puzzling, dark underbelly to the world of microfinance, including everything from suicides in India to non-payment populist movements in Nicaragua to government allegations heaped on Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, widely acclaimed as the founder of microcredit.

So where does Agros fit in all this?

Unlike microfinance institutions (MFIs), Agros does not rely solely on interest payments to cover its program operating costs. For-profit MFIs can return millions of dollars to their public investors—but in difficult economic times with little market competition, many have resorted to alarmingly high interest rates (soaring over 100 percent in some places).

Agros has always used loans for land as a pivotal part of our work. Since 2001, Agros has also provided enterprise loans for productive activities. Agros ensures manageable interest rates between 5 and 12 percent, depending on the repayment terms and the country—land loans, the largest and with the longest repayment term, maintain an even lower interest rate of 3-5 percent. As families pay back their loans, their payments are deposited in the dedicated Noemí Fund: founded in 2004, a permanently restricted revolving loan fund to provide loans for purchasing land and building homes. Repayments help maintain and build the value of the Fund over time for when new communities are ready to purchase land.

Charging interest serves two purposes: to preserve the value of money over time and to prepare borrowers to successfully access and manage credit for new business ventures when they exit the Agros program. With these guiding principles, Agros can evaluate and provide manageable, fair interest rates—and provide flexible repayment schedules that are adjusted in unexpected circumstances like natural disasters.

Perhaps the biggest factor for success is education. The people most in need of economic support—the poorest of the poor—have no prior experience with credit, much less business development. When high-interest loans are given without training to support new clients, the system can harm the poor more than help them. MFIs, by definition, focus on financial services; within this capacity, some organizations are providing financial literacy training to their clients. For Agros, credit is a means towards the end of financial self-sustainability; thus, we go beyond basic financial trainings in budgets, loans, and interest to coach borrowers in business plan development, profit projections, marketing, and contract negotiation. This increases the financial impact of loans and ensures the success of the borrower.

On top of everything else, most people in remote, rural regions—like where Agros works—do not even qualify for microcredit from MFIs. Generally, MFIs are set up to fund micro-businesses in high-density urban areas with a quick profit turnaround. The cost of operating in rural areas is simply too high—and profits can be much slower, such as investments in livestock. Through Agros’ long-term development model, relationships are established that reduce the risk of default and provide the support needed for success. In fact, Agros has seen entire regions experience an economic lift, attracting new investors, contracts, and microfinance opportunities—as well as infrastructure improvements by the municipal government—as communities develop.

One of the signs of success for Agros is seeing microcredit projects turn into self-sustaining enterprises. In Guatemala, 18 communities around the town of Nebaj are cooperating in a coffee exporting contract. Agros has worked in the area for more than a decade with families in Agros villages and through this project, neighboring land-holding families were invited to join Agros villages in credit and training opportunities. Atlas Coffee, a Washington-based coffee export company, offered a contract to the Agros village of Trapichitos, contingent on being able to produce enough coffee for the project to be financially viable. Families throughout the region were offered microcredit loans to purchase agricultural inputs like fertilizer and seeds, trained to cultivate their land efficiently and sustainably, and given technical assistance in negotiating with the exporter. As families and communities gain more experience and confidence managing the project, Agros’ involvement has decreased and the project is becoming self-sustaining.

In the US, this coffee imported from Nebaj by Atlas Coffee is now exported around the world by Washington roasters and sold locally in cafes as diverse as a Seattle job-training coffee shop for street youth to an executive suite at the Microsoft campus. The project has been a great success all around.

Credit at Agros—in the context of holistic support—really is making the world a better place.

You’ve done chocolates and crowded restaurants. This year, give your Valentine a gift that both inspires and has lasting meaning.

What can you give your Valentine? Here are just a few ideas:

	Flock Of Chicks – $25 To our eyes, they are a cute bundle of fluff. To a hungry family, they are a source of food, income, and employment. Chickens provide eggs, meat, and a rich source of natural fertilizer that nourishes crops on the family’s land.

	New Mother and Baby Kit – $75 This kit provides rural moms with the knowledge and skills necessary for a successful birth, including training in reproductive health, pre-natal and infant care, nutrition and hygiene, and early education and parenting practices.

	Cow/Steer – $500 A cow represents a long-term investment for the rural family. It takes planning, pasture, and thoughtful care. Most poor, rural families eat only corn and beans. A cow provides milk and other products, and a source of pride that they can count on for the future.

In commemoration of Street Bean’s recent one-year anniversary, Agros International would like to highlight our informal partnership with the local coffee shop. Street Bean is a social venture business – connected with New Horizons Ministries – that is using coffee to serve those in need. The effort helps street youth by providing job skills and a safe place of steady employment.

Street Bean also uses Trapichitos beans for its drip coffee. In this way, it is not only helping youth to get off the street and become self sufficient, but also supporting the rural poor in South America do the same. This Street Bean promotional video highlights the unique relationship between the two types of poverty that are being addressed.

The street youth that work at the Street Bean are not only learning valuable job skills that are altering the course of their lives, they are also learning about the incredible journey out of poverty that rural, campesino famers in Central America are on. These two journeys out of two vastly different types of poverty have a unique relationship at Street Bean. Through this collaboration, lives are being transformed here in Seattle and in Central America.

We arrived in Honduras in various states of being. Six days later, each of us had been changed.

“We” was a group of graduate students from Harvard University, mostly from the Harvard Business School (HBS), but a few Kennedy Center grads who were working in Washington, DC, a medical student in Public Health who was taking HBS courses, and an Arts and Sciences grad student. The organizer of the group was Barry Rowan, an HBS alumnus and chief financial officer of a major telecomm corporation, who along with his wife Linda (a CPA), has been walking alongside HBS students for three years in an informal mentoring role. Brian Myrhe, a second year HBS student, who had travelled with us to Honduras a year ago on a similar trip, joined Barry and Linda on the leadership team.

The Rowan family supports Agros, and specifically the people of Bella Vista, an Agros village in the Santa Barbara region of northern Honduras. Barry and Linda’s son Mark came as well: his knowledge and love of the villagers and his fluency in Spanish were a wonderful part of our time. And, because that time together was to include some intergenerational dialogue, Barry and Linda invited their good friends Chuck and Katie Kovac.  Chuck and Barry were past associates in business, with very funny stories about the companies they “almost bought”.

Why the dialogue, and what were we there to do? As Barry put it, our mission was “to walk with Jesus as He walks with the poor.” That sounded plausible– if not somewhat ethereal– to most of us, since all of us on the trip would identify ourselves as Christians. But what, asked the participants, were we going to DO? As the Agros staff member who knew, I responded to the question in the best way I could: “We are there to be present to the villagers as they work their way out of poverty. To encourage them, to listen to their challenges, to celebrate their victories”.

At the end of a trip such as this one, people become more forthright. That’s when I discovered from several frank comments that my answer was the statement most likely to be seen as “a load of crap,” as one of the participants put it. “But that’s exactly what we did,” the same commentators added in hindsight, “we tried to be present, and we could see that it made a difference.”

These students are trained in the highest standards of business and policy. As expert investigators, they fanned out and quizzed the villagers. Those who had been to the villages before were drawing comparisons, using their observations from previous years. Brian, for instance, remembered that Piedra de Horeb villager José Inamorado had been slowly building on his one-room home, one concrete block at a time, as the profits from his farming and other work enabled him. Brian made a point of going to see the house a year later. José was proud to show him the second room and dedicated kitchen area, and he opened his wallet to show Brian the truck driving license he had successfully obtained. But José’s widest grin was reserved for the introduction of his wife, who had finally moved on to the village property once the home had been built. (A member of the village leadership council shared with me that there had been a marked increase in José’s attitude and interaction with the community once his wife had joined him: “And now”, he added, “his father-in-law actually comes to visit.”)

The next day, we visited Bella Vista, the newest village. We could not help but admire how they had cleared and planted this formerly wild mountainside with coffee and shade trees and plantains. Then we listened as Juan José leaned on his pando (a long-handled weeding implement with a curved blade), and told us how his life had changed since he had moved his family from Los Bordos, the slums of San Pedro Sula, a little over a year ago: “We are very happy, now, we are in good health. It’s peaceful here. My children, Kimberly Nicole, José, and Edmundo are on school vacation, so they would normally be here in the fields with me, but right now they are with their mami, preparing your lunch.” He paused, thinking about the contrast, about what his children would have been doing at this moment in Los Bordos, with the two parents away, working long hours. “This is my mission,” he said, his voice breaking ever so slightly, “to see them prosper.” He bowed his head and brought his hand up to cover his eyes, but he needn’t have: the rest of the fathers in our group were crying right along with him. It’s a mission we recognize, one in which we all need help: rich, poor, Ladino, Gringo, Central and North American.

Later, Barry remarked, “We have to become poor, recognize our own poverty, to walk with the poor, so that we can be in solidarity.” Juan José gave us a moment to do that.

We spent some time listening to the leadership of Brisas del Volcan, another Agros village, as they presented their progress on their annual plan. What stood out to me, however, were two simple statements from Odilla Zaldivar, the elected president of Mujeres en Acción, the Brisas women’s community bank. Like all of Agros’ women’s community banks, there is a compulsory savings element to the banking plan. Odilla stepped out from behind her peers to report on the various enterprises they had funded and said, “Since we founded the bank in September 2010, we have saved $400.” She paused for the inevitable applause, and seemed about to go back into the shadows, but stopped herself and added in an even stronger voice, “For myself, I have banked $90 in savings.” She nodded twice for emphasis and disappeared from view. Later, Joel Martinez, the director of Agros Honduras who is beginning to take on regional responsibilities for Agros beyond his own country, but knows each villager by name and history, told me: “Odilla is very shy; she rarely speaks in public. For her, just talking to all of you is a great personal breakthrough.”

While the Harvard students inquired about the interest rates, the most efficient land-use schemes, and the profit centers of various small enterprises, I was asking myself the question I ask every time I visit and see how the villagers, old and young, men and women, have changed: What is this power of transformation? Where it is located? How is it most effectively transmitted?

Joel answered my unspoken questions by telling me about his most recent discovery. He had recently insisted that each of the villages have all of their legal papers for land ownership drawn up by lawyers, witnessed and publically signed. Agros normally does that, but not necessarily all at once or in public meetings.

Joel and I were walking along the road that borders the property of Bella Vista, looking down at the houses that had been built since my last visit six month’s previous, with their small gardens and outdoor sinks.

“Ownership is very important,” he commented, “All of our human development is based on ownership. You can see those results here in front of you. When it is clear that you own something, you care for it differently, you participate in community differently.” I thought back to Juan José, whose entire mission is based on his responsibility to his children, on José Inamorado, whose pride of house and home had brought his family to believe in his mission to break the debilitating power of poverty, and on Ursula, whose evident pride in her first savings account had given her the power to interact socially in the public arena.

I thought of something I had read in the Bible, one of the sayings of Jesus: “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Luke 12:34) As a relatively rich person, I had always understood the verse to be a warning against materialism, an admonition to invest in spiritual things.

On my visit, I saw this differently. Jesus’ saying got turned on its head. The hearts and minds of the poor were being changed. They displayed dignity and firmness of resolve, all due to their heart being where their treasure was placed.

Returning from Honduras, our exit visas in hand, we entered the upside down kingdom, where the last come in first.

If you’ve had opportunity to get to know Agros and our work of empowering entire rural villages to work their way out of poverty, you’ll have heard us talk about the complex, long-term focus and impact of this work.

Following is an excerpt from an interview of Ben Ramalingam, author of the blog (and forthcoming book) Aid on the Edge of Chaos.  Interviewed by Dennis Whittle, Ben explains the nature of navigating the complex human systems inherent in poverty alleviating interventions.

International aid has been built on a very particular way of looking at the world, and this continues to dog its efforts. As a senior USAID colleague put it, because of our urgency to end poverty, we act as if development is a construction, a matter of planning and engineering, rather the complex and often opaque set of interactions that we know it to be.

…The whole system disguises rather than navigates complexity, and it does so at various levels – in developing countries and within the aid system. This maintains a series of collective illusions and overly simplistic assumptions about the nature of systems, about the nature of change, and about the nature of human actors.

So the end result of all of this is that poverty, vulnerability, disease are all treated as if are simple puzzles. Aid, and aid agencies are then presented as the missing pieces to complete the puzzle. This not only gives aid a greater importance than perhaps it is due, but it also misrepresents the nature of the problems we face, and the also presents aid flow as very simple.

Instead of engaging with complexity, it is dismissed, or relegated to an afterthought, and the tools and techniques we employ make it easy for us to do this. We treat complex things as if they were merely complicated.

(For complex systems) there is no mathematical model which can say, if X is the situation then do Y. Sustainability, healthy communities, raising families have all been given as examples of such complex systems and processes. Peacebuilding would be another, women’s empowerment, natural resource management, capacity building initiatives, innovation systems, the list goes on and on. Complexity science pulls back the curtain on these processes and it can force you to think about the world you live in in a different way.”

As a learning organization, Agros strives to “think of the world a different way” such that real, lasting transformation can take place for an entire community rising out of multiple generations of systemic poverty. Yes it takes funding, resources, partnerships, a proven model; this is precisely why the Agros approach to poverty alleviation is holistic, integrated, and can only work when village members themselves are the main actors and navigators of their own future.  A future that is undergirded, however, by a web of initial funding, credit, partnerships, and trabajo, trabjo, y mas trabajo!

We’re approaching that special time of year when we give more of our time, energy and resources to the people and causes that mean most to us. Some take time to spend with friends and family to celebrate the holidays in different ways. At our holiday staff party, we all donated gifts to a homeless shelter for youth in our neighborhood. Our in-country staff in Central America and Mexico take a much-deserved rest from their busy schedules traveling between their home, office and Agros communities, often being away from their family for a week at a time.

Those living in Agros villages celebrate in many different ways as well—and many give gifts to one another in response to the blessings they’ve received over the year.  We’ve had many villagers take from the surpluses they have and offer it to even poorer, neighboring families.

Personally, I’m most impacted by the generosity of the Agros families not just during this holiday season, but throughout their daily lives, even as they are fighting their way out of the cycle of poverty one day at a time.

For example, this calendar year, a long-standing activity in Guatemala villages, Women’s Community Banking, received funding to expand to four additional countries. These lending groups are sustainable in the long-term and are designed to increase access to small loans in the community and neighboring areas.

Very few rural women have access to even the smallest loans from banks or MFIs due to their lack of collateral. Through Women’s Community Banking, however, women serve as collateral for each other—if one woman defaults on her loan, it’s up to the others to cover her payment. Each woman contributes to a joint savings account which is eventually grown to provide loans to individuals outside of the Community Bank. In this way, the Community Banks are gifts that keep giving—each woman’s financial success and responsibility makes a positive impact on her family and the entire region that the bank grows to serve.

Since January, women’s Community Banks increased from 23 banks of 400 women in Guatemala to 31 banks in Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador, involving over 500 women. More than $135,000 has been distributed in loans in the last 12-month period.

Another example of gifts that keep giving are animal projects.

Animals represent a long-term investment for the rural family. 88% of Agros families own animals to sustain their livelihood. Animals provide food, income diversity and security and labor-saving work in the families’ fields. Many Agros communities receive rabbits, cows, sheep or goats, along with training in animal husbandry techniques with the expectation that the first offspring will be passed on to another neighboring family.

By passing on the blessing of animals, more families have been able to access this gift of health and economic security that animals provide.

There are so many ways that Agros’ work in Central America and Mexico multiplies and continues to give after a first initial investment. Beyond Women’s Community Banking and passing on the blessing of animals, the families we serve teach us what gift giving really looks like and how powerful it can be.

You, too, can give the gift that keeps giving! And with every dollar matched now through December 31st, your impact is doubled!

· Women’s Small Business Loan
· Women’s Economic Initiative Training
· Raise a Cow
· Flock of Chicks
· Give a Goat
· Tend an Animal Menagerie

Thanks to the generosity of an anonymous donor, we’re excited to share a life-changing opportunity. From now until midnight on December 31st, every dollar you donate to Agros – up to $100,000 – will be matched dollar-for-dollar!

What ways can you give? It’s up to you – you can make a general donation online, donate by phone, donate by mail, or give a gift in honor of someone you love from the Agros One Seed Alternative Gift Catalog. Regardless of what method you choose, your gift will be doubled!

Your gift to Agros will make a lasting difference in the lives of the rural poor, allowing them to obtain the necessary training and assets to escape poverty for generations to come. And whether you’re providing loans to start community banks, supporting clean water projects, or funding the training of a village health promoter, now your gift will have double the impact!

Now is the perfect time to consider how much you can give – and how much more it can do – to empower families in Central America and Mexico to work their way out of generations of poverty. Consider making a gift of $100, $250, $500, or more. Through December 31st, that gift will be doubled to $200, $500, $1,000 or more!

P.S. – If you plan to make a gift from the Agros One Seed catalog and you’d like us to send your honoree a gift card for the Christmas holiday, please be sure to order your gift by Tuesday, December 21st to ensure it arrives on time. If you’re sending a donation through mail, be sure that it’s postmarked no later than December 31st in order for it to count toward the matching gift opportunity!

It’s the holiday season here in Seattle, and people are doing what we used to call “entertaining:” opening their homes, having one another over for food and drink. It’s a time-honored practice; my wife Linda and I are having our own open house in a few days.

At the same time, I am also preparing to lead an Agros group to Honduras in early January. As I work towards both events, my mind goes back to October, when Linda and I were privileged to be able to host Danubia, an Agros villager, and her travel companion Nohemy, an Agros Honduras staff member, for the final day of their Seattle visit.

It was important to me that we have Danubia and Nohemy come over, I had told Linda. Both of them had repeatedly shown me and my fellow travelers hospitality, in their own homes in Honduras. We fed them a lunch I had cooked. We explored our neighborhood a bit. Both are back in their own country, now. I will see them again in a matter of weeks. They won’t be at our open house, but I will be at theirs.

When I return to the Agros village Brisas del Volcán in January and I greet Danubia, who will no doubt have helped lead the village women into cooking a fine lunch for our party of 20 guests, it will be different. She has been in my home, now, as I have been in hers. Linda has shown her pictures of our family. We walked through the Ballard farmer’s market together.

We will see each other better, because we will have seen how we are when we are at home. Danubia has seen something of how we live, of what Linda and I aspire to be when we are at home. Because I have visited her in the past, I have seen that for her life and the lives of her fellow villagers.

There is something about seeing for one’s self. I am reminded of a story that gets enacted and re-told this time of year: A tale of three men travelling a long distance on the say-so of an astronomical anomaly, to visit a couple that had just given birth in temporary housing: the stable of an inn in a garrison town of an occupied country. The three wealthy astonomers came, they gave gifts, they left. We have no record of what they said to the couple, or vice-versa. Why did they make the journey? The narrative tells us about their interest, but the couple they are visiting do not ask the question, and their child is too young to ask an impertinent question.

Agros villagers do sometimes ask why we have come. The answer I give is simple: To see how you are doing on your epic journey to break poverty in a single generation. To encourage that journey, to celebrate it, to listen to your challenges.

This accompaniment is, for me, one of the unique aspects of Agros. Our in-country staff visits villages weekly, doing the work of agronomy and human development, encouraging appropriate entrepreneurial risk, demonstrating the uses of capital and connecting villagers with resources and partners.

But when supporters come to visit, most of us bring little of that expertise, and we are expressly forbidden to bring gifts. We are not visiting the “less fortunate.” Like the family of a marathon runner, we are simply there to witness and encourage the journey.

And like the “wise men” of the story, we usually end up going home by another way.

November 6^th marked the ninth annual UN International Day for Preventing the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict. Realizing that this is a rather long title for an international ‘day’, and that this may seem like an obscure connection for Agros to make, it does in fact present an opportunity to highlight several important aspects of our work.

Agros was founded in 1982, in the midst of a violent and decades-old civil war whose epicenter was located in a region of Guatemala called the “Ixil Triangle”.  During this 36-year civil war, more than 200,000  lives were claimed, hundreds of villages destroyed, and more than one million people forced to flee their homes (any refugees fled to Chiapas, Mexico–where Agros currently has six villages in development).

More than 80% of the victims in the war were indigenous Mayans.  The atrocities that took place during this time are unimaginable and overwhelming. Even long after the violence ended, the land and the people were left ravaged, desolate, and in the words of many Ixil people…”we were forgotten.”

Conventional wisdom might dictate that starting a development organization in the middle of a civil war might not be the most advisable; yet Agros’ history is one of responding to enormous need felt by people who are among the most remote, impoverished people in our world.  The Agros response is to alleviate poverty by providing rural people with what is most essential: secure ownership of their own, farmable land; sustainable economic development; and holistic community support.

This connection we make to this UN sponsored international day is in the consideration of “damage to the environment in times of armed conflict that impair ecosystems and natural resources long after the conflict has ceased“.  Our work to connect rural people to their own land has necessarily involved empowering rural families to rebuild and restore land and villages destroyed by civil conflict.

Virtually all of the Agros villages located in the Ixil region of Guatemala were founded in the midst (or aftermath) of this violence.  Today, these families are learning to thrive; hope has been and is continuing to be restored.

To learn more about these villagers–in their own words–and to see what it means for them to have the opportunity to rebuild their lives and land, please see the video “Restoring Lives” in the Agros video gallery.

Thanks to the incredible generosity and involvement of more than 450 guests and volunteers, Agros International’s 7th annual Tierras de Vida dinner was a phenomenal success!

Guests at the October 23rd dinner contributed more than $505,000 to help rural poor families overcome poverty and become self-supporting.

Guest speaker Gary Darmstadt, Director of the Family Health, Global Health Program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, shared the plight faced by the millions of people across the globe living in rural poverty.

Keynote speaker, Danubia Orellana Lopez, from the Agros village of Brisas del Volcan, Honduras, captured the crowd as she shared her personal journey of hope and transformation.

Danubia, one of 14 children, grew up in dire poverty in Honduas – the third poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. As a young mother, she earned forty cents a day working on a coffee plantation – hardly enough income to provide for her family. Inspired by her mother, Danubia banded together with 7 other women to work for a better future. She called the group, “Unity and Strength.” They began to bake bread together, and plant coffee seedlings, to earn an income.

In 2005, Danubia and her group met a representative from Agros International who offered to help them buy land, and train them to work the land together, to generate more income, and become self-supporting. Danubia’s dreams for a better future became a reality in 2006, when she and her group, with support from Agros, started the village of Brisas del Volcan!

Danubia received a standing ovation from the packed crowd, as she shared, “Our children will not suffer like we did. They can dream, and as parents and because of what we’re building with Agros, we can now help their dreams come true.”

To each and every one of you who joined with us for this year’s Tierras de Vida, we extend our heartfelt thanks, for helping to make this event a record breaking success!

Mil gracias!

Last weekend, Tropical Storm Matthew passed across Central America and southern Mexico affecting all of the countries where Agros works. The storm brought torrential rains, flooding, and crop damage. The impact of the storm was exacerbated by the fact that the region had previously experienced 6 weeks of constant, heavy rain that left much of the land fully saturated. By the time Tropical Storm Matthew arrived, conditions were set for significant rain damage.

We have been in close communication with all Agros Country Directors as they have evaluated the storm’s impact and formulated plans to reinvest and support the communities through this time.

The initial damage estimates are:

Mexico:
Basic grain crops damaged in three communities: San Pedrito, Santa Fe Ajké, & Espinal Buena Vista.

Honduras:
Basic grain crops damaged in all four communities and plantain crops showing delayed growth development.

Communities affected: Brisas del Volcán, Nuevo Amanecer, Bella Vista, &La Piedra de Horeb.

El Salvador:
Basic grain crops damaged in two communities: San Diego de Tenango and La Esperanza.

Nicaragua:
Basic grain crops damaged in all seven of the affected communities; coffee & plantain crop damage in four communities; the greatest damage is in Luz de Mañana–four families are currently staying with family members in the city of Rivas until the flooding subsides. There was also housing and latrine damage in the community of Nueva Esperanza.

Communities affected: El Edén, San José, Nueva Esperanza, Futuro del Mañana, San Marcos de Belen, Luz del Mañana, & Norwich.

Guatemala:
No reported damages.

The most significant damage occurred in Nicaragua, particularly with the corn and bean crops, which were to serve as a primary food source for future months.

In Honduras and El Salvador, the Country Directors and their staff are working with the local authorities to access available local resources to help the communities replant.

Agros International’s priorities are to make certain that essential food security remains in all villages; that income generation continues; and to ensure access to needed healthcare and housing repairs as necessary. Agros International has emergency funds that will be leveraged towards this effort; local authorities are making resources available; and Agros will be launching an appeal to raise an additional $16,500 to cover the unexpected losses.