Quarterly Progress Report: Community of Special Coffees Project - 1st Quarter 2022

The project is implemented by Central Café y Cacao del Perú, in partnership with DevWorks International, a subcontractor. The project team, led by Geni Fundes, Director General, and Jorge Iglesias, Technical Coordinator, focused on contracting personnel, implementing procedures, and acquiring equipment. The project team signed a subaward agreement with DevWorks International, which will provide technical assistance, monitoring, evaluation, and learning support, as well as commercial promotion and market linkage facilitation for certified and specialty coffees in the US and European markets. The team also presented the Project Operational Annual Plan (POA) and submitted a request to the Peruvian Agency for International Cooperation (APCI) to recover the Value-Added Tax (IGV) on goods and services acquired during the project implementation. A delegation from the Central Café y Cacao del Perú team participated in the 5th Specialty Coffee Fair (V FICAFE) in Cusco, where they organized the 2021 Cup of Excellence and presented at the 2nd National Coffee Congress. The team also visited ten coffee cooperative partners, presenting the project and establishing terms for collaboration. The visits resulted in the signing of cooperation agreements between the Central Café y Cacao del Perú and each cooperative partner. The project team also contracted a consultant to develop the baseline study, which will support the construction of the Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) plan. Additionally, the team selected and contracted a consultant for the Environmental Mitigation Plan (PMMA) and initiated the plan in early January 2022. By the end of the reporting period, the project team had submitted a proposal for the CCE branding manual to USAID for evaluation. The Community of Specialty Coffees Project aims to strengthen the supply chain of certified and specialty coffees, focusing on ten coffee cooperatives in the regions of Junín, Cusco, and Puno. The project is supported by Development Works, US coffee buyers Atlas and Red Fox, Peruvian financial institutions FOGAL and Los Andes Cooperative, and other stakeholders. The project's theory of change emphasizes adding value to the product by focusing on quality, innovation, and supply chain shortening. The project aims to reverse the crisis and make the coffee activity profitable for coffee-growing families, cooperatives, and communities, while also contributing to the reduction of illicit crop cultivation. The project began with the signing of the contract on September 15, followed by induction meetings with the USAID technical team, personnel contracting, equipment purchasing, and cooperation agreements with partner cooperatives. The project also benefited from the successful development of the 5th Cup of Excellence, which marked one of the most important activities in the project's first quarter.