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After a successful trial, the nonprofit SANA has launched a project to provide integrative psychosocial teletherapy sessions, as well as education and community support, for women coffee farmers in Colombia.
As Daniel Woods writes for Global Coffee Report, the idea for SANA arose while founder Lucia Bawot was working on her book, “We Belong.” “In my work documenting women in coffee farming communities, I kept hearing the same quiet but urgent message,” Bawot told Woods. “They were carrying so much—and had so few places to put it down.”
According to SANA, 31% of Colombia’s coffee workforce is made up of women, but they suffer from increased mental health risks due to systemic gender inequities like unpaid labor, income gaps, and domestic violence. At the same time, access to mental health care is limited, especially in rural areas.
A trial in 2023 included 39 women coffee farmers and pickers who participated in teletherapy sessions, group workshops, and virtual education programs offered by local licensed psychologists in Colombia. Every trial participant felt “heard, supported, and guided,” Woods writes, while 92% were able to resolve personal challenges and 85% “valued the remote access and noted more comfort in expressing themselves and the elimination of travel barriers.”
Bawot is now expanding the trial through a five-month project that includes a virtual education curriculum; teletherapy sessions with a team of local, specially-trained psychologists; and community support. SANA is accepting donations, facilitated by the nonprofit Bean Voyage and therefore tax-deductible, to help meet its goal of enrolling 120 women this year.
Bawot hopes the program will help not only the participants, but also their wider communities. “When women are emotionally healthy and heard, they not only care for themselves, they ripple that strength out to their families, their communities, and the future of coffee itself,” she said.
Read the full story on Sana’s mental health initiative here.
