Walking the “K’ojolaa” Coffee Trail
A stop along the K’ojolaa Coffee Trail to learn about young coffee plants.
An ecotourism project created and led by Tz’utujil Mayan youth in San Pedro La Laguna, Lake Atitlán, Guatemala
On the shores of Lake Atitlán, in the southwestern highlands of Sololá, Guatemala, a promising new cooperative initiative is beginning to take root. The “Coffee Tour K’ojolaa,” is an ecotourism project that was envisioned, planned, and organized by ten Tz’utujil Mayan youth in the small town of San Pedro La Laguna. Ranging in ages from 23-28, the project’s creators are members (or the sons and daughters of members) of Adenisa, a local, small-scale coffee cooperative.
The project is part of a much larger effort by Equal Exchange to support the social, environmental, organizational, and productive efforts of their Latin American small farmer coffee and cacao cooperative partners. Through Equal Exchange’s Cooperative Development Program (CDP), a small team works with participating cooperatives to help identify their development goals and create strategies and initiatives to successfully achieve them. Financial and staff resources are channeled directly to the cooperatives to help provide material resources, technical assistance, and capacity building training to implement the desired programs.
In Guatemala, Equal Exchange‘s CDP team works with the organization’s long-standing coffee cooperative partner, Manos Campesinas. Founded in 1992, Manos Campesinas is a secondary level cooperative which currently groups together 13 grassroots cooperatives located in four Guatemalan departments. Roughly 90% of the cooperative’s 1500 members are indigenous Mayans, of Mam, Quiche, Kaqchikel and Tz’utujil ethnicities.
The co-op supports its members by providing them with access to alternative global markets that offer higher prices and better financing conditions; marketing and sales services; and technical assistance to increase the quantity and quality of the coffee harvest. Recently, Manos Campesinas also began offering technical support to help the farmers diversify their products, convert to organic production, improve the administration of the cooperatives, and promote greater participation of women and youth.
The biggest threat facing Guatemalan coffee cooperatives
According to recent studies, somewhere between 50-65 percent of Guatemalans live below the poverty line. In rural areas, and within the indigenous population, the poverty rate approaches 75-80 percent. Lack of employment and educational opportunities, and government inattention to the population are pushing Guatemalan youth to migrate to the U.S. and Mexico in record high numbers.
Alarmed by this trend, Manos Campesinas invited Equal Exchange’s CDP team to work with them to create a youth inclusion policy for the organization. The goal was to better understand the dynamics that young people associated with their cooperatives face; create strategies and programs to keep youth connected to the cooperative by identifying opportunities for more active participation; and ultimately, to provide viable economic alternatives to the dangerous and high-risk option of migration.
“Manos Campesinas was very clear that there was an urgent need to create solutions for the youth. We heard repeatedly that migration is an even bigger crisis for them than climate change: ‘We are going to be left without our young people, and if we lose our youth, we’ll lose everything,’ they told us.”
Workshop focusing on gender equity and youth inclusion for the next generation of co-op members at Manos Campesinas.
Phase 1: Listening to their members
The first phase of the project began in April and May 2021. Equal Exchange’s Coop Development team worked with Manos Campesinas to design and implement a comprehensive needs assessment process. They used a participatory methodology that included a wide range of different voices across the organization.
Three focus groups were held respectively with members of management and technical staff, the board of directors, and producer members. Two more were held with youth associated with the co-op. Following up on the focus groups, the team conducted 23 one-on-one interviews: three from management, six from the technical team, and 14 with young members and the sons and daughters of members.
The findings were surprising.
During the process, they heard a frequent refrain; particularly from parents and co-op members: “Our youth aren’t interested in staying in Guatemala.” “Young people don’t want to remain in the countryside.” “Our children aren’t interested in farming.” “Farming is too hard, and the young want an easier life.”
Focus groups and interviews with the youth painted a very different picture.
When asked directly, most young people voiced a common dilemma. Land is scarce. The average size of a member’s farm is less than two and a half acres, which isn’t large enough to make a living from coffee production. For this reason, it was true that many young people (though not all) have lost interest in coffee farming. But it wasn’t true that the majority want to leave the country; or even the countryside.
In fact, most young people expressed a strong desire to stay in their communities. And while they didn’t necessarily want to produce coffee, they did want to support their parents and the cooperative by working in areas related to coffee, such as in accounting, administration, quality control, and ecotourism. Others wanted to work in agricultural projects complementary to coffee, such as in organic fertilizer production, beekeeping or animal husbandry projects.
According to Daniela Flores, “Through this process, it became clear that coming up with alternative income-generating projects is a solution to a very real social problem. The parents told us, ‘Our kids don’t want to stay here,’ but we discovered that in fact, they do. They just need a diversity of opportunities to make a livelihood.”
The youth were invited to share ideas for specific income generating projects that they would want to collectively develop and manage. The teams then wrote and submitted their proposals. In November 2021, four different projects were agreed upon, each to be implemented in a different primary level cooperative: an organic compost production facility, two chicken coops to raise hens and produce eggs, and the K’ojolaa Coffee Trail ecotourism initiative, on the shores of Lake Atitlan.
“We presented the findings and Manos Campesinas, both management and the board, committed to supporting these alternatives. We were really impressed with their level of commitment. In fact, we haven’t found another coffee cooperative that has taken steps to create this kind of youth inclusion policy.”
Lake Atitlán: “It’s our best calling card”
One of the first rules of business planning is the importance of identifying and building upon one’s assets. As 24-year-old Sara Melany Puzul, one of the K’ojolaa Coffee Tour’s project members expressed, “The lake is our best ‘carta de presentación.’” Lake Atitlán is one of Guatemala’s most popular tourist attractions. Nominated one of the planet’s seven wonders, its turquoise waters fill an enormous volcanic crater 4500 feet above sea level. Surrounded by the blue hills of the Sierra Madre Mountain range; three striking volcanic cones; and lush, green farmland, its panoramic vistas have caused many to call it the world’s most beautiful lake.
Spread out around Atitlán’s 25-mile perimeter lie a dozen isolated communities that are populated by different Mayan groups; each with their own language, customs, and traditions of clothing, weavings and crafts. Historically, the residents around the lake have survived primarily through subsistence farming. In recent decades however, some of the indigenous communities have also developed tourist economies based on their unique histories, cultures, and distinctive artisan markets.
Panajachel, the largest town on Lake Atitlán, is conveniently located at the crossroads of several major highways and bus lines, facilitating its development as a bustling, commercial hub where Guatemalans, expats, and tourists (foreign and national) come together to carry out a wide variety of business and recreational activities. The town is buzzing with people buying and selling food, artisan crafts, and tourist services. Throughout the day, motorized boats shuttle residents and visitors back and forth across the lake to the smaller towns and villages that ring the perimeter of the lake.
Equal Exchange Cooperative Development Program team: Leslie Rosales, Daniela Flores, Julia Baumgartner, and Paola Coronado, at Lake Atitlán.
The K’ojolaa Coffee Trail
San Pedro La Laguna, a community of Tz’utujil residents, lies 20 miles across the lake from Panajachel. Visitors make the half-hour ferry ride to visit the Atitlán town known as the “backpacker’s paradise.” The passengers disembark and head to the main street where brightly colored woven textiles and other crafts fill rows of market stalls. A line of three-wheeled tuk tuks (motorized rickshaws) await the newly arrived visitors to scurry them off to their destinations: youth hostels, restaurants and cafes, Spanish-language schools, volcanic hikes, weaving classes, and a multitude of artisan shops and markets.
During the past year, the “tuqueros” (tuk tuk drivers) have begun to promote a new activity to approaching visitors: “a chance to walk the Coffee Trail, San Pedro’s newest project run entirely by local youth.”
“When we were invited to come up with an idea for a project in our community,” 28-year Kevin Gonzalez, Adenisa member and one of the founders of the “K’ojolaa Coffee Tour,” told me, “We thought about what kind of project would make sense here in San Pedro La Laguna. We wanted to take advantage of the lake and all the tourists who come here. As Sara said, the lake is our greatest asset.”
“We thought about opening a café and offering visitors a great cup of coffee. But we decided it was important to do more than that: we wanted to support our cooperative; show visitors all the hard work and skill that goes into producing coffee; educate them and generate respect for our craft. So, we came up with the idea of developing an ecotourism project based on a ‘coffee trail;’ an educational project that would show people step by step everything involved in producing a quality cup of coffee. We named the project, K’ojolaa, which means youth in Tz’utujil.”
Kevin Manuel Gonzalez Ixmata and his father, Manuel.
The coffee tour
The tuk-tuks bring the interested visitors to Adenisa’s facilities where they are met by one of the project’s team members. “For now, we offer two tours,” Kevin explained. “The complete and the partial. The complete tour is farm to cup. We take our visitors to an organic coffee farm belonging to one of Adenisa’s members where we show them how we grow our coffee, take care of our farms, produce organic fertilizer, and everything else involved in sustainable farming.
Then we bring them back to Adenisa’s facility to show them where the coffee beans are brought after the harvest and how they are processed. They can see how the pulp is removed, the beans washed and dried in the sun. Next, we show them how the coffee is roasted. We set up a ‘tasting,’ where they can sample different coffees. Finally, we invite them to relax in our café with their favorite coffee drink.”
“Sometimes,” he went on, “we have visitors who can’t walk the long distance to the farms. In those cases, we suggest the partial tour. They can skip the farm visit and instead start the tour at Adenisa where they will learn all the steps that come after the harvest: wet processing, roasting, and grinding, followed by a coffee tasting before relaxing in the café with a drink. Both tours end in the café where another youth shows the visitors artisan products, and bags of our coffee, all produced here in San Pedro and for sale.”
Above Left: Lucy, the first woman promoter at Manos Campesinas, explains her role at the coffee collection center. Above Right: José Alfredo, a local promoter and agronomy student leads the field portion of the organic coffee tour at Adenisa.
Voices of the youth
I asked Kevin, Sara, and Viviana Vasquez Pantzay (age 23) why they started this project and what they found most exciting?
Kevin: “The project is exciting because it takes advantage of our location and that so many tourists already come here, both local and international. The town depends on visitors, so we thought, wow, we could create this fantastic project! Our product offering is the entire coffee trail.”
“We know that coffee is such an important product all over the world. And we want to show each visitor that behind every cup of coffee there are so many steps. And we get thanked for this, because most people love the coffee, but they have no idea about all the steps that go into producing it.”
Sara: “We young people, kids of the co-op’s members; we’re interested in coffee. Maybe we aren’t interested in the cultivation of coffee, but we do want to participate in the coffee sector. We want to show the sacrifices that our parents make from cultivation to processing, and all the steps in between.”
“We also know that as young people, we don’t have many opportunities. So, we put our heads together and thought about how we could spark this project; how do we continually grow and improve on it? We had the idea to offer this educational service, but then wanted to also offer a product: a great cup of coffee which would complete the whole process.”
Viviana: “Our parents work so hard. We young people want to show all the work that our parents are doing. They make so many sacrifices and even some of us don’t fully realize that. So, when we thought about that, this idea just came to us.”
Kevin: “We love running this project as a group; coming up with new ideas; and trying them out. But to do this project well, we also need all the right tools: The trainings that we have received through Equal Exchange and Manos Campesinas have helped us organize ourselves, learn how to project costs, and keep records.”
Above left: Maria Lucia Navichoc Ixtetela, Chusita del Alma Puzul Cotuc and Sara Melany Puzul Cotuc of Adenisa. Above right: Kevin Manuel explains coffee processing on the drying patios as part of the coffee tour.
Phase 2: Skill-building
The four projects were approved in November 2021 and the following February, the young entrepreneurs began receiving training in accounting and administration, financial planning, leadership development, gender equity, and conflict resolution. Members of all four projects travel from their communities to Manos Campesina’s facilities in Quetzaltenango, to learn new skills and share their experiences with each other.
Beyond these trainings, the members also receive courses to learn skills necessary to run their specific projects. Sara and another member are participating in a three-month certification course run by Equal Exchange in “barrismo.” Two others are learning roasting and quality control. Evelyn Rodas, CDP Project Coordinator for Guatemala, emphasized how important these skills are, “More and more foreigners, and nationals, are becoming increasingly more demanding in their desire for a good cup of coffee.”
“Kevin is a professional accountant and administrator,” Evelyn added. “We want him to train the others. In fact, the idea is that each one of them will train the others in a train-the-trainer model so that all the learning is shared.”
I asked them how much the tours cost and how they came up with the prices? “At first, the training we received helped us with the question of prices,” Kevin explained. “We learned how to determine our cost structure including everything we needed to carry out a complete and partial tour, from farm to collection center to a coffee tasting. And we ended up with 100-125 quetzales ($13-$16)/person. Later, we plan to offer overnight stays to our visitors, and we will have to figure out how much to charge per day, but we haven’t decided that yet.”
Young leaders from Manos Campesinas after a workshop.
Phase 3: Current activities & future plans
Café renovation: “We have lots of ideas, but right now, our priority is the café,” Sara told me. Finishing the installation is super important. We’ve purchased glasses and tableware, but we still need more chairs and tables and umbrellas.”
“Our vision is to be able to offer a complete service of coffee drinks. Because foreigners; well also many Guatemalans; are very demanding about their coffee: they want cappuccinos and lattes. So far, we can only offer a French Press, a Chemex, and a small stovetop espresso maker. So, we need more equipment, to be able to provide all these drinks that foreigners request. We’d like a large cappuccino maker that serves ten people so if we had a lot of visitors at once, no one would have to wait.”
Education: “We get great ideas from our visitors! One of them suggested we create a wall of photos in the café, where people who can’t make it to the farms would be able to learn the different steps involved in planting, cultivating, and harvesting organic coffee. We also thought about creating portable photo exhibits to leave at the farms, so no matter what the season, visitors could still learn about everything we do during the other times of year.“
Marketing: At the moment, they rely on the tuqueros to promote their project. In the future, they talked about hanging large banners at the entry points of the community advertising their project. They will also create brochures to leave around town and develop a social media presence.
Tour guide certification training and English classes: Evelyn plans to contact the Guatemalan Tourism Bureau to enroll some of the members in professional hospitality certification training to learn the skills involved in running tours and attending to clients, and to secure the necessary permits. Viviana added that they would like to learn English so that they can offer tours in three languages: Tz’utujil, Spanish, and English.
Homestays & work stays: “For now we just offer the tour and a simple cup of coffee. But we’ve heard that some visitors really like to stay with a family so that they can see how they live, cook, and weave. They may want to go to the farms and help pick coffee, learn to make organic fertilizer, and carry out other agricultural activities. Eventually, our project will include all these offerings.”
Project evaluations
Finally, I asked, what have you learned from this project? What have you most enjoyed and what has surprised you the most?
“Without a doubt,” Daniela Flores told me, “It has been most exciting to see the degree of enthusiasm and creativity with which the youth have carried out this project. They began the project in November, even before they had even received any resources; money or training. They were so excited, they decided to move forward anyway. They got the idea to talk with the tuk tuks; of forming alliances with the tukeros; paying them a small commission and asking them to promote the tours. And they started bringing anyone interested to visit the farms, the coop’s facilities, and the outdoor café, which had been abandoned and was very rustic. At that time, they didn’t have a lot of coffee equipment to serve specialized drinks, but nonetheless, they started with just a French press and a Chemex.”
Evelyn added: “I’ve been impressed by the level of support that Adenisa, Manos Campesinas and Equal Exchange have all given to the youth. First to listen to them and then to support their leadership and entrepreneurship in carrying out the projects. That level of support doesn’t happen everywhere or in all organizations.”
Kevin: “We’ve learned so much from the visitors who come. We learn about each other’s cultures. They give us new ideas; sometimes very different from ours. It’s such a big world and there’s no end to what you can learn. For example, every harvest is completely different; no two will ever be the same. That impresses me, because it means that you can always learn and always do better.”
“It’s interesting: people always come and assume that everything is done with machinery. Because that’s how it’s done in their countries. Here, we do everything by hand. This is so important to me; that they understand and value all the work that we do. It’s very difficult work, but it’s also really nice. We try to communicate that to them. If we sell them a bag of coffee, we want them to value it and to pay a fair price.”
Sara: “We are always learning something. I’ve really enjoyed meeting the tourists and seeing how surprised the people who’ve visited us are when they learn that this project is run by us—young people! That surprises them, and they always say, ‘What a great idea!’ This is so encouraging. I mean, if all these people like our project so much, well, it makes me want to keep going and to keep improving it.”
“One person who visited us owns a café in Europe. So, I asked her what recommendations she has, and she said, ‘Everything is perfect! I wouldn’t change a thing.’ Well, that meant a lot to me because I know how much Europeans value their coffee.”
Viviana: “We’ve learned so much, even about ourselves. I’ve loved being part of a group. Each one of us in the group, we have different qualities and strengths. And each one of us has learned something from the others. It’s been very complementary. It’s one of the goals of the group; that we all learn from each other, so we can share what each of us is learning and replicate all the skills among us.”
Kevin jumped in: “We’re an association. The idea is that everything we learn we will then teach each other. And so, if there is an emergency and someone can’t be here, another one of us can step in if we need to. When you can’t do something, someone else can.”
“It’s like a cooperative,” I suggested. Kevin lit up: “Exactly! That’s the idea! It’s the most important thing about this project: we are a collective. We make all our decisions together. We will have good results; because at the end of the day, our actions will speak for themselves.”
Viviana concluded our meeting, “Come visit us! We will serve you a great cup of coffee and offer you a lovely experience.”
Young leaders from Manos Campesinas and the Equal Exchange CDP team at Adenisa.
Conclusion
As someone who used to lead tours of the coffee cooperatives for many years, I can’t help but add my own voice of excitement about the work being done by the CDP team, Manos Campesinas, and the youth of the “K’ojolaa” Ecotourism and Coffee Trail Project. For years, we at Equal Exchange have understood the importance of bringing coffee consumers, roasters, buyers, cafe owners, and activists to coffee cooperatives. There is no substitute for meeting and talking to coffee farmers and seeing first-hand the hard work involved in growing organic coffee and all that is required for us to enjoy a cup of high quality “gourmet” coffee. To know that it is now the youth, the very members of the coffee cooperatives and the next generation of coffee coop members themselves, that are doing this work, and doing it their way, gives me much cause for optimism.
I share Daniela Flore’s enthusiasm about another unique aspect of this project. All around Lake Atitlán are tourism projects, the vast majority developed by foreigners, expats, and Guatemalans from other parts of the country. The beauty of the lake, and the rich culture and traditions of the indigenous communities, attract “entrepreneurs” and tourists, but the bulk of profits resulting from these projects rarely ends up within the communities themselves. As Daniela told me, this is one of the only projects around the lake that was created by a grassroots organization and perhaps the only project designed and managed by a youth collective.
See for yourself. If you have plans to visit Lake Atitlán, be sure to contact the Adenisa office and book your spot on their next tour…or just get yourself to Panajachel, take the ferry to San Pedro La Laguna, and ask any tuk tuk driver to take you to the “K’ojolaa” Coffee Trail. I promise, you won’t be disappointed.
Want to book a tour? Contact Adenisa to get started
adenisaconta2020@gmail.com
+502 4698 7235
Written by Phyllis (Felicia) Robinson, Citizen-Consumer Member & former Equal Exchange Campaign and Education Coordinator