Colette’s Story

Colette, a coffee farmer in the Eastern Province of Rwanda, has been able to expand her harvest, her land, and her dreams for her family of 4 since graduating from the Kula Fellowship in 2019. She was awarded a business grant through Kula’s Business Plan Competition for her composting business, and with the additional composting and agribusiness best practices, each tree on her farm now produces 400-500% more coffee cherries than they were before graduation.

Through her business, she and her husband have purchase two plots of land: one where they planted a eucalyptus forest to encourage the growth of mulching grasses - to be used in their coffee farm as mulching and as an integral part of creating compost - and the other through which they expanded their coffee farm. They’re using portions of their own farm to run experiments on what combination of compost, manure, and fertilizer produces the highest coffee cherry yield, and have been able to make consistent investments in their composting business to see it thrive.

Colette and her husband say that their standard of living has “completely changed” through the growth of their businesses, and their story is a testament to results that come with holistic business development.