Hurricane relief initiative Honduras

The coffee community in Honduras has been severely affected by the hurricanes Eta and Iota, which had hit the region within 10 days span. Severe rains fell over Honduras for more than 2 weeks, causing 500,000 people to flee their homes and severely damaging roads, communication infrastructure – and causing huge economic losses in the smallholders’ coffee farms through landslides and coffee falling from trees.

Falcon Specialty and Emerga Coffees are partnering in this fundraising campaign in order to raise funds for our partners and friends back in Honduras – the cooperative Aruco and its member farmers. Our major aim is to help these farmers get back to their farms and mitigate and minimize the severe economic impact on their families.


What happened?

Many of the farms that are in the vicinity of the regional river have been flooded, while the severe rain had caused substantial damage to the coffee crop – leaving many families with heavy losses and disabling them from much needed income that they rely on each year. The main road that is connecting the local town Corquin to the rest of the country is not accessible due to the bridge being washed away. The storms and volume of water flooding the river were so great it has caused the river to shift to a new course.  Right now they are working hard to clear the debris and begin reconstructing this bridge/create a way to cross the river that is safe. This is just the beginning of a long process. The coffee community in Honduras are currently dealing with Covid-19, dengue disease, devastation aftermath of two hurricanes and all this whilst needing to somehow organize the harvest and minimize the impact of losing any further crop and prevent farming families being significantly financially impacted.

What we want to do?

Our friends and colleagues at Aruco continue to collect information in order to be able to quantify the amount of the damage caused to the farms. Together with our team, we are mapping and prioritizing the work that needs to be done at different farms and supporting individual farmers. This is the least that can be done now – money is needed for engaging additional workforce which will open the access to farms, clear landslides on access roads, clean the fallen trees in the plantations, collect the remaining crop, and enable safe collection of the beans and bringing them to the drying beds and patios of Aruco. It will be a momentous day-and-night effort for the coming months until the end of the harvest in February/March.

How can you help?

It is a very grey time in a very difficult year, but together with you, we can make that adequate help reaches the farmers. Raised funds will be sent directly to the Aruco Cooperative account where they can best place the funds to the farmers and towards infrastructure in the areas most in need. This will be documented and recorded to show that the funds are being used towards the relief efforts for these communities. There is a clear plan moving forward and this will adapt to the obstacles that arise. There is a local steering Committee that follows and guides all these activities, they will be accountable to guide the relief effort and funds to where they can have the biggest impact.
 
-Falcon Specialty will be donating initially $0.20/kg of every KG of Honduran coffee invoiced in December 2020 and January 2021 to the relief fund as well as initially donating $2500.

-Falcon Micro have discounted every coffee on the website by 15% and are matching the discount on every purchase that has been made over a week (01/12 – 08/12) donating to the fund.

-Emerga Coffees are donating $1000 to the fund to help support the communities here as they were integral to the commencement of the relationship with Falcon and Aruco

All the money will go directly to the Cooperative where this will be administered by a relief fund committee and directed to the areas and families most in need. The Cooperative will provide regular updates on how the money has been allocated and how the harvest is progressing.


The funds will be used for initially:

-          Funding the renting of tractors and diggers to help clear roads of landslides, making farms accessible again.

-          Helping with the repair and reconstruction of damaged houses from the storm.

-          Giving out of new coffee plants to replant and replace those trees lost in the landslides.

-          Helping those famers most in need whose income will have been most impacted with the loss of coffee that will take years to regain
 

We thank you for all your support and kind Generosity

 Yours Sincerely

Falcon Specialty, Falcon Micro & Emerga Coffees