Immersion Program educates about the impact of coffee in Guatemala

The De La Gente Immersion program serves as a tangible way to raise awareness about coffee production and all actors involved, from farmer to consumer. Immersion Program offerings whether an Origin Trip, Faculty-led Trip, or Immersion Trip all seek to educate participants about the inner workings of the coffee industry and its impact on the communities with which we work.

We provide context through a variety of immersive, hands-on, and informational activities that delve into the complex, and often tragic, history of coffee in Guatemala and the ongoing legacy of undervaluing and exploiting coffee growers for their labor. We show how we’re giving agency to farmers to prove that coffee growing, when paired with processing expertise and market access, can be a tool of economic empowerment.

Immersion Program Trips

Origin Trips

Designed for roasters, baristas, and wholesale green coffee buyers, Origin Trips take coffee professionals to the coffee origin where they forge relationships with small-scale coffee producers and more conscientiously examine their own role with the coffee industry.

Immersion Trips

Immersion Trips are crafted for coffee enthusiasts seeking to better understand the intricacies of coffee cultivation and interact with small-scale producers. Trip itineraries take participants into the farmers’ fields and homes to learn first-hand about the work involved in producing a cup of specialty coffee.

Faculty-Led Trips

In collaboration with educational institutions, we implement FacultyLed Trips that use coffee as the vehicle to better understand the legacy of colonialism and imperialism in Guatemala. After understanding the complex history of coffee, participants interact with the producers and witness how they’re now using coffee as a tool for their own empowerment.

Multiple Faculty-Led Trips in 2022 included a service-learning component. In January, students from the University of Wisconsin Eau-Claire worked alongside members of Cooperative Ij’atz to build a small warehouse at the cooperative’s wet mill, where coffee growers bring the ripened cherries to be processed. Completing the project during the duration of their trip, the warehouse is now used for storing the cooperative’s depulper (the machine that takes the outer skin, or pulp, off the coffee cherry). In May, participants from the Academy of Global Citizenship accompanied Eduardo, a member of our partner cooperative, the Coffee Growers of San Miguel Escobar, in building a water catchment system to tend to his coffee plants.

This project has benefited me and my neighbors, because now we can use the tanks to catch water. Before I had to carry water in plastic jugs out to my coffee fields... It was truly an eye-opening experience working with youth. It fills me with great satisfaction to know that there are people willing to improve the lives of producers, especially youth. After all, they are the future.

Eduardo Hernández, Coffee Growers of San Miguel Escobar

[Students]] come back to the U.S. with new knowledge and greater understanding of the interconnected and interdependent nature of our relationships with the world, and Guatemala, in particular. These larger understandings, combined with the opportunity to meet the actual coffee farmers and their families, personally, emotionally, psychologically, and intellectually challenge all visitors—including the faculty and staff leaders—to rethink what they have learned about the U.S., global trade, international relations, Latin America, indigenous people, the impacts of their decisions of what products they buy, and so much more.

Jeff DeGrave, Intercultural Immersions Coordinator, University of Wisconsin-EAUClaire