Kula Project

Kula Project provides them with a Kula Fellowship, which is a 15-month holistic program supporting the development of the entrepreneurial capacity and life and leadership skills of coffee-farming families. While the fellows grow their businesses on their own farms, they can increase their income, gain access to better healthcare and nutritious food, send more children to school, and support families and communities at-large. Once fellows graduate, Kula Project continues to support them through continued purchases of their coffee. Kula Project supports at least 150 producers in the Twongere Kawa Coko Cooperative in Rwanda.

Kula Project works closely with the farm fellows, including by sending trainers to visit their farms on a monthly basis. Farm fellows have access to both individual and group training, finance training, educational programs, personal development programs, and community development workshops. Kula Project strives to support these fellows while they learn more about coffee farming practices, improve the quality and output of coffee, benefit in their physical and psychosocial well-being, gain confidence through decision-making processes, achieve a gender balance, and succeed in creating a sustainable business. Kula Project has developed a strong relationship with the coffee farm fellows over the years; “Kula” itself means “community of heart” in Sanskrit.

To begin, coffee trees take approximately three years to reach the first harvest, with the primary harvest season in Rwanda lasting from late March to late May, on average. A maximum of eight hours is allotted to send the coffee to the processing center to avoid a loss in quality. Next, the farm fellows will sell the product to the local coffee station for processing including de-pulping, washing, fermenting, sorting, drying, sorting once more, and de-parching before exporting and roasting it. Producers work together during this process in a supportive and collaborative environment. These coffee beans were grown by women entrepreneurs working with nonprofit Kula Project and were roasted by Prevail Coffee Roasters.

Kula Project prioritizes organic practices. For example, the coffee is only processed with filtered water and Kula Project’s environmental consultant has helped to modernize their washing station to ensure environmental sustainability. Furthermore, all materials used are sourced locally. Most of the producers have worked on these farms their entire lives, inheriting the land from their families, and some of them have also become brand new coffee farmers through Kula Project’s support.