Exploiting potential together

Santa Bárbara in northwestern Honduras is considered the oldest coffee-growing region in the country. Besides a poorly developed infrastructure and limited agricultural and ecological knowledge, steep slopes make growing and harvesting coffee difficult.

The productivity of the mainly small coffee farms is low, and there is a lack of business management skills. This results in low sales revenues and difficult living conditions.

Heavy rainfall and drought due to climate change or coffee rust, a plant disease, can also result in crop failures and poor harvests.

We want to help local people improve their prospects by helping them to help themselves.

H.E.L.P. gives coffee growers economic, ecological and social assistance intended to help them achieve long-term security. Alongside the sometimes difficult cultivation conditions for coffee in Santa Bárbara, harvests depend on many external factors. Heavy rainfall and drought caused by climate change, and coffee rust, a plant disease, can lead to bad harvests.

But some of the risks can be mitigated, and to do so, through H.E.L.P. we are assisting with reforestation for mixed cultivation, planting shade-giving plants that also reduce soil erosion, and the development of new coffee varieties that are immune to coffee rust.