The Problem

The Philippine economy relies heavily on agriculture, yet many of its farmers continue to live in poverty, with the average smallholder farmer making less than $3/day.

The Solution

Kalsada Coffee is a social enterprise that builds small community-based processing facilities and educational demo farms to increase quality from rural coffee communities. By organizing communities to consolidate their harvest and process their coffee collectively, they are able to reach the global specialty coffee market.

Impact

Since 2014, Kalsada Coffee has had a significant impact on 45 smallholder farm households, increasing their income by an average of 60% per household.

Loan Use

With this Kiva loan, Kalsada Coffee can begin a partnership with a new coffee community, expanding Kalsada's impact to 290 households this harvest season. Coffee is an annually grown crop in the region of the Philippines Kalsada works in. This can pose a difficult cash flow problem for a coffee wholesaler like Kalsada because coffee is harvested once and then sold throughout the year. This funding supports will bridge the cash flow gap between paying our coffee producing families during the harvest season and receipt of payments from our customers: wholesale cafe partners and specialty roasters.

Categories

Regions

Kalsada