In 2015, Sarah Buchanan and her Kula Project team took a meeting that had been requested through their Rwandan Country Director with a group of women who, through the establishment of a savings group, had been able to purchase a small plot of land in rural Rwanda. The team arrived at the meeting not knowing what to expect, and found a group of 48 women sitting on hand-carved stools - looking for a brighter future. The group called themselves “Fight to Live,” since every one of them had been diagnosed with HIV, and because of this had been shut out of most traditional ways for Rwandan women to earn a living. Kula Project invests in family coffee farms as a means to help create sustainable incomes for Rwandans, and the women of Fight to Live knew that turning their small plot into a coffee farm could create a sustainable income for 30 or more years. In April 2019, Fight to Live reaped their first harvest of 140kg of coffee cherries, placing the profits in a shared bank account in which they work together to find the best ways to invest for the benefit of the entire cooperative.
We tell you this story for a few reasons: first, to introduce you to the work of our friends at the Kula Project, who helped make this dream into a reality, and secondly to outline the multitudes of ways that we can all help to empower communities in East Africa to live a life beyond AIDS. CARE for AIDS focuses on holistic care for those living with HIV/AIDS in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda, and Kula Project focuses on creating sustainability for women living in Rwanda, but our visions intersect when it comes to empowering those in underserved and sometimes forgotten communities. We celebrate Kula Project and the work that they do because we long to see a sustainable future for all communities in East Africa, and we’ve been blessed to work alongside them for years as our organizations have grown. In fact, Kula Project and CARE for AIDS used to share an office near downtown Atlanta, Georgia.
This December in honor of World AIDS Day (December 1st) and National AIDS Awareness Month, CARE for AIDS and Kula Project are partnering to raise money and awareness. We’ve put together a bundle of Kula Coffee along with a vintage-inspired CARE for AIDS porcelain diner mug that you can purchase, which will help further the missions of both CARE for AIDS and Kula Project.
In a year where nothing seems to have gone quite right, we wanted to create something we could all do together. One of our favorite things to do is get together in the mornings before team meetings and just chat over our coffee. We haven’t been able to do that this year like we did in the past, but we’re hopeful that we can create a kind of shared experience with this bundle and bring you in with us as we strive to empower more people to live a life beyond AIDS. We’re thankful for the willingness of our friends at Kula to come alongside us in this, and we hope you’ll join us as well.
100% of the proceeds from the sale of this bundle will be split evenly between our two organizations.