BURLINGTON, Vermont – Food 4 Farmers has received a $50,000 grant from Rick Steves’ Europe, one of America’s leading European travel and guidebook companies. The grant will support Food 4 Farmers’ work with coffee-farming families to address food insecurity in Latin America’s rural communities by transforming small-scale coffee farms into diversified, environmentally sustainable agricultural hubs.
“We’re happy to receive this generous support for our work with coffee-farming families,” said Janice Nadworny, co-director of Food 4 Farmers. “The increasing impacts of climate change, coupled with rising food costs and devastatingly low coffee prices, make food security a more critical need than ever.”
Food 4 Farmers partners with coffee cooperatives representing 8,000 coffee-farming families to reimagine how they interact with food and secure their futures. On average, families in Food 4 Farmers’ partner communities in Colombia, Guatemala, Mexico, and Nicaragua experience 3 to 5 months of food insecurity, year after year. The organization’s goal is to help families throughout Latin America disrupt the global food system and create thriving local food hubs, using climate-smart agriculture.
Food 4 Farmers is among 11 nonprofits selected to receive grants as part of Rick Steves’ $1 million Climate Smart Commitment. The yearly investment will go directly to two kinds of organizations: groups advocating in Congress for US policies to fight climate change, and nonprofit organizations who are helping farming communities in the developing world mitigate their contribution to climate change by employing climate-smart agriculture and forestry techniques.
Rick Steves’ Europe’s Climate Smart Commitment reflects the company’s core value of demonstrating good global citizenship. For 40 years, travel writer and public television host Rick Steves has been encouraging Americans to travel abroad. Throughout his travels, Steves has seen the harmful effects of climate change. He recognizes his organization’s ethical responsibility to account for the toll that the 30,000-plus travelers who fly to Europe each year to take his company-led tours have on the environment.
“Mitigating the carbon emissions we cause is simply the right thing to do,” says Steves. “The beneficiaries we’ve selected are working to help farmers in the developing world rise out of poverty while contributing less to climate change.”
Readers can support Food 4 Farmers’ climate-friendly approach to food security here http://bit.ly/F4FTransFARM
About Food 4 Farmers
Food 4 Farmers partners with Latin American coffee-farming communities to cultivate a food-secure future. The team coaches and connects coffee cooperatives, small-scale farmers, and their families with the expertise they need to strengthen local food systems, build economic independence, cultivate leadership among families, women and young people, and support environmentally-friendly farming practices. For more information, visit www.food4farmers.org.
About Rick Steves’ Europe
Located in Edmonds, Washington, Rick Steves’ Europe produces a best-selling guidebook series on European travel, America’s most popular travel show on public television, a weekly hour-long national public radio show, and free travel information available through ricksteves.com. Rick Steves’ Europe also runs a successful tour program, organizing tours for more than 30,000 travelers to Europe annually. In a move to help mitigate the carbon emissions from travelers who fly to Europe for Rick Steves tours, the company announced an annual $1 million donation to climate-smart nonprofit organizations in 2019. To learn more about the grant program and application process, visit the company’s Climate Smart Commitment page.
