What Oxfam is Doing
- Helping Family Farmers
- Preventing Disasters
- Overcoming Discrimination and Exclusion
HELPING FAMILY FARMERS
Oxfam supports innovative organizations that are helping family farmers, women's organizations, and indigenous people in Central America defend their rights and improve their incomes.
Family farmers in rural communities across Central America, Mexico, and Cuba are consistently denied access to credit, small loans, and other forms of financial aid. Traditional banks rarely grant loans to poor farmers, who have little to offer in the form of collateral, and lenders that do provide loans charge exorbitant interest rates. This leaves many small farmers with little means to expand their farms or build a better future for their families.
Oxfam-supported small loan groups provide alternative sources of credit, charging affordable interest rates, and providing additional support to loan recipients so that their business ventures will be successful.
Oxfam also helps family farmers form cooperatives and run environmentally sound and marketable businesses. In 2002 and 2003, Oxfam supported almost 3,500 small-scale coffee growers and their family members through assistance to nine different coffee cooperatives in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, and Nicaragua. As the traditional coffee market is no longer a viable option, these organizations sell their beans in the specialty coffee market. Their work to produce organic, high-quality gourmet beans, fair trade coffee, and shade-grown beans is helping increase revenues and protect the environment, all with an eye to improving the lives of community members.
