AsoSeykún is an Arhuaco community of indigenous people of Colombia. They are Chibchan-speaking people and descendants of the Tairona culture, concentrated in northern Colombia in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta.
With the support of Carrboro Coffee and in collaboration with The Chain Collaborative, they are pursuing a strategy to recover, reforest, and protect their ancestral land. They are meeting this goal by processing and selling their coffee collectively at a fair price, ultimately increasing internally-generated income.
96 people participate in collective decision-making meetings and trainings to work toward their goals.
The first stage of AsoSeykún’s project was a diagnostic of 23 coffee farms in their community to assess tree quantity and health as well as soil health. The second stage focused on infrastructure and training.
With our support, AsoSeykún has been able to repair the roof and build necessary fencing around their new drying beds to protect the area and their coffee from animals and rain. Additionally, they have purchased GrainPro bags, a moisture meter and a scale to maintain better quality control when drying and storing their coffee.
We also support their quality training and education programs. Our financial support has allowed them to hire a trainer to build the capacity of three young leaders in their community. Three youth from the community (Rafael Torres Suares, Nerum Enrique Villafaña, and Juan Izquierdo Perez) were successfully trained in coffee drying and storing by Elías Torres, an agronomist who had already provided support to AsoSeykún in 2023. He conducted two site visits in 2024 – one at the beginning of harvest season (October 2-4) and one at the end (November 18-20). Elias educated the leaders about best practices for coffee harvesting and processing, and the leaders are now responsible for transmitting their knowledge throughout the farm families.
In the first year, 17 full days of training on best practices related to producing and processing high-quality coffee were achieved. As a result of this project and their learning, they were able to sell their coffee as dry parchment for the first time with their 2023/2024 harvest.
For the first time, AsoSeykún was able to sell 2,000 kilograms of dry parchment, which meant an additional $1,200 in income for the community.
Through our continued support and continued coffee training, the AsoSeykún anticipate a 25% increase in coffee to be processed and sold collectively from their next harvest. We look forward to continuing to support their quality-focused coffee initiatives that enable them to reclaim their tribal land.
