WHY DID WE START CARICO?

We started CARICO because at our heart we are coffee farmers from Bugisu, on the slopes of Mount Elgon in eastern Uganda.

For about one hundred years, our close and extended family, have been growing Arabica coffees in the rich loam volcanic soils of region. Three generations on we have seen some development in our area, but we feel there could have been more.

Many of the farmers grow their coffee on small plots, under the shade of banana trees, which provide our staple food. We also plant beans in between the coffee so that they can add more nutrients to the soil. Our crops are watered by the rain and the natural rivers and streams which flow down Mount Elgon. We grow our coffee at an altitude of more than 1300 metres above sea level and higher. All the coffees are processed by hand and a lot of attention and time goes towards this. Each coffee cherry is picked when it is ripe and this means that during the harvest season there is a lot of picking.

At CARICO we work towards improving the lives of the farmers. We’ve invested in the Makuyu Primary School. The school began as a sub grade school in the 1920s and in 1938 Nicolas Nnangole upgraded it. It is now a government owned school and has 500 pupils, and many challenges. Many of the children of the farmers we work with in the Budadiri region of Bugisu are pupils at Makuyu Primary school and therefore under the CARICO Builds programme we are assisting the school. We’ve provided the school with clean drinking water, for the first time ever. Clean drinking water is an important constituent for good health.

And we’ve done more. Under the CARICO Builds programme, with our partners, we have sent coffee seedlings to Makuyu Primary School in Bugisu in eastern Uganda. The pupils will plant and tend the coffee on their school farm, as part of their existing one hour a week of agriculture lesson. We will buy the coffee and the funds will be used to buy them school lunch. Currently only 60 of 500 pupils can afford lunch. The pupils were so excited when they received the seedlings that they sent us a short video saying thank you. and sell the coffee to us.

Working with other members of the community, like the Budadiri Professionals Association, we want to improve the school facilities and move it up the rankings from 11,972 out of 12,723 government owned primary schools in #Uganda.@caricocafeconnoisseur is working towards developing the coffee industry in the communities with whom we partner and investing in the transformation of the small-scale farmers who grow the coffees.

We need your support to do this.