Root Capital clients grow rural prosperity by creating sustainable livelihoods. In Mexico and the Caribbean, Root Capital clients include coffee and cocoa cooperatives, processors of fresh and dried fruits, and businesses that produce handcrafts for export markets. Continued growth is expected in these areas.
COOPCAB, a Fair Trade coffee cooperative and Root Capital client, operates in one of Haiti’s few remaining tracts of rainforest in a country where less than 1.5 percent of the land is forested. Through its reforestation program and purchase of fairly priced specialty coffee, COOPCAB provides a powerful link between environmental conservation and economic benefit for its 5,000 producer members.
Nestled in the buffer zone of the El Triunfo Biosphere in Chiapas, Mexico, Triunfo Verde is a coffee cooperative that grows organic and fair trade-certified coffee. In 2000, Triunfo Verde was a new cooperative of fewer than 100 members with a young management structure. Today, it has more than 255 members, and it is known for its transparent accounting and management practices.
SOGEPA, an organic cocoa exporter, located in Dame-Marie, Haiti, nine hours from Port-au-Prince, is firmly rooted in in the community, offering social and environmental benefits to its producers and local communities. SOGEPA, with Root Capital support, is contributing to better incomes for cocoa farmers while increasing tree cover in a country with only 1.5 percent of forest tracts remaining.
La Red is a small cocoa cooperative in the Dominican Republic that export its members’ cocoa so farmers are no longer forced to sell locally to middlemen at low prices. With credit from Root Capital and reliable sales to Taza Chocolate, La Red can pay its members a higher price for their cocoa beans, allowing farmers to improve their standard of living.
Laguna Baja ARIC is a federation of nine community-based ecotourism enterprises operating in the San Ignacio Lagoon in Mexico’s Baja Peninsula. The San Ignacio Lagoon is the last pristine gray whale birthing lagoon left on the Pacific coast of northwestern Mexico. Don Pachico runs Pachio’s Ecotours. Root Capital has been his only source of credit since 2002.