Lesson-76531-18

The studies prepared for Colombia provide more learning about adapting the toolkit. The Living Income and Living Wage Report and the Time and Motion study offered insights and covered issues not addressed in any detail in the toolkit. Once completed, the studies were subject to consultation process with small groups of coffee workers and smallholder producers from the Manos de Café project. The lesson learned is that the innovative and complementary studies in Colombia based on the pre-situational analysis generated a new and different understanding of the priorities of the coffee workers and smallholder producers from the Manos de Café project, which were quite different from the initial pilot project proposals. This new understanding included the coffee workers’ emphasis on reducing their vulnerability rather than increasing their income from the harvest and prioritizing social safety nets, food security, and alternative sources of income for the off-harvest season. It offers an important lesson for Verité, demonstrating the need to test project hypotheses through a process of direct engagement with the workers the project intended to benefit. In this respect, the pilot project acted as a catalyst, re-focusing the attention of the externally financed Manos de Café project to a new set of issues.