Bean Voyage is using chat technology to move their post-harvest training forward during COVID-19.
BY JIYOON HAN
SPECIAL TO BARISTA MAGAZINE ONLINE
Photos courtesy of Alexa Romano
Bean Voyage is an organization in Costa Rica that helps womxn coffee producers improve their livelihoods through coffee education. (We recently talked to their cofounder Abhinav Khanal for our 10 Minutes With feature.) Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, producing countries including Costa Rica have experienced many buyers breaking contracts, while other contracts still being honored are facing delays due to logistical challenges. Many if not most of the womxn who Bean Voyage works with are smallholder producers, who often do not have the backing from large exporters and importers capable of taking on the pandemic-induced cash flow burden. Just as Bean Voyage was launching their post-harvest training program for their coffee producers in early March, quarantine restrictions were instituted by the government in Costa Rica. To respond to these restrictions, Bean Voyage moved its curriculum to WhatsApp via COVIR-20.
COVIR-20, which stands for Colaboración Virtual 2020, was originally planned for in-person training through March and April, and is designed to help producers with post-harvest techniques. Bean Voyage cofounder and CEO Sunghee Tark says, “We had to adapt quickly to the circumstances and move everything online.” They chose WhatsApp as the program’s platform to ensure that no participant would be left behind for connectivity reasons. The participants range in age between 16 and over 60, and they have all been using WhatsApp since 2016.
COVIR-20’s curriculum is designed to be interactive and fun, even on WhatsApp. Participants share voice notes and post photos of their homework. Voice notes, a popular feature on the app, are on average no longer than two minutes to optimize retention, and are accompanied by infographics to enhance learning. Instructors have found that many participants replay voice note instructions to internalize the material. For producer Monserrat Prado, the learnings from COVIR-20 are “very practical to use and very flexible to apply.”
The program weaves in interactive games, which keep the participants on their toes during sessions. To encourage intimate connection between participants, the program creates breakout rooms on WhatsApp. COVIR-20 creates a virtual community in spite of social distancing. Coffee producer Franciny Vargas Salazar is “happy to know that we are not alone in this amazing world of coffee during these tough times,” and is relieved to “have [our] fears heard and doubts answered.”
Another silver lining in COVIR-20 is that participants save time on travel. Tatiana Vargas, a coffee producer in Orosi, comments, “It saves us time as we don’t have to travel to places for training. There’s more time for us to interiorize the topic and get our questions/doubts answered.”
Bean Voyage is realizing that WhatsApp is a powerful tool for learning, “as long as the materials are designed for it,” according to Sunghee. Once the eight-week pilot is over, Bean Voyage will analyze their data on participation rate and knowledge retention to gauge their success. “We will publish our learning for the others to learn from our experience as well,” says Sunghee.
In and outside of a pandemic-influenced world, COVIR-20 has shown us an example of how technology can be used for inclusive and accessible coffee education when platforms like WhatsApp are available to everyone.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
A native New Yorker, Jiyoon Han is a Q Arabica Grader, Q Processing Generalist, and was a judge for the U.S. Coffee Championships 2019 Brewers Cup Prelims. As Chief Daughter at Bean & Bean Coffee in NYC, Jiyoon sources, roasts, and cups coffee. She’s a student at the Harvard Business School, where she is co-president of the Coffee & Tea Club.
