In Colombia, SANA is Providing Much-Needed Mental Health Support for Women Coffee Farmers

Millions of people around the world rely on coffee production for their livelihoods. While women are a minority among coffee farmers, they perform upwards of three quarters of the work that takes place on coffee farms. Even still, they own or operate fewer than a third of the farms themselves.

Beyond lack of ownership, women in coffee-producing countries face systemic inequalities when seeking education, and are more likely to endure precarious employment or unpaid labour. For those living in rural farming communities, accessing resources as basic as healthcare—both physical and mental—is especially challenging. In addition to the general struggles of daily life, coffee farmers face specific mental health challenges caused by the industry’s volatility, including price spikes and the threat of climate change.

While researching her 2023 book, “We Belong”—which tells the stories of women coffee farmers and pickers in Colombia—Lucia Bawot travelled the country to conduct more than 60 interviews. Instead of just discussing coffee, “We spoke about their human experience”, Bawot tells me. “I learned so much, and I immediately realised, ‘Wow, a lot of these women have gone through a lot of trauma. A lot of these women are grieving’”.

In response, Bawot developed a pilot programme for a mental health initiative that she hoped would benefit the women she had interviewed for her book. After the success of the pilot—during which 39 women received tele-counselling sessions with licensed psychologists, plus access to other support systems—Bawot formally launched SANA in 2025.  

Today, SANA has expanded its focus to work with more women coffee workers in Colombia. But the response it’s received shows that there remains a huge unmet need for mental health assistance for women coffee farmers—not just in Colombia, but globally.

The Gendered Coffee Paradox

Gender inequality within agriculture is a systemic issue. A 2023 report from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations found that “women’s access to land, services, credit and digital technology lags behind men’s, while a higher burden of unpaid care limits their opportunities for education, training and employment”.

In a 2025 article for the Specialty Coffee Association’s magazine, “25”, the researcher Erika Koss described what she calls the “gendered coffee paradox”. As she explains it, this paradox lies in the contradiction that, while women generate immense value for and within the coffee industry, they receive very little value from their labour. The term, Koss wrote, “summarizes the contradictions implied when the global coffee industry undervalues women’s labor and disproportionately rewards men”.

This undervaluation is backed up by data: A 2018 report from the International Coffee Organization found that up to 70% of labour in coffee production is performed by women, while they own or operate only 20–30% of coffee farms. Cooperatives and other community-based organisations, which can be crucial for connecting farmers with new markets or technical assistance, are also often out of reach of women due to “prevailing social norms, time constraints and limited mobility as a result of the double burden of household and field work”, according to the report.

These inequities extend into healthcare. Women reported poorer access to healthcare than men in 24 of 29 countries covered in a 2026 study, and this disparity is exacerbated in the Global South. In Latin America, for example, a 2021 study found that the region’s healthcare systems are “deeply fragmented and segmented, which poses great challenges related to the provision of quality of care and overall equity levels in health and in Latin American society at large”.

Although Colombia has a high-quality healthcare system and wide coverage, it is often difficult to access for those living in rural areas—which, again, is exacerbated for women. Mental healthcare is generally even less accessible. On average, according to the United Nations, Latin American countries allocate less than 3% of their health budgets to mental health, while the region has higher rates of anxiety and depression, both of which impact women more than men. “Gender-based violence, unequal caregiving responsibilities, and rigid social expectations all contribute to women’s higher vulnerability”, the UN reports.

‘I Let Out So Much and Cried a Lot’

Bawot had made a commitment to sharing a portion of the proceeds from her book with the women she featured. But after publication, she says, “I started thinking, ‘How can I send this money back?’ It felt almost like paying them for letting me photograph them”. She began looking for organisations or projects in Colombia’s rural coffee-producing areas that focused on mental health, but couldn’t find any.

“I realised there was no one doing any mental health or wellness work in the coffee industry, and especially for women coffee farmers”, she says. “So I decided to create a pilot and create a structure based on my experience in coffee farms”. That pilot was Beans to Mind, which ran in 2023 and offered tele-counselling sessions with licensed psychologists, as well as virtual education and group workshops, to 39 women coffee farmers who Bawot met while researching her book.

The feedback from those involved was overwhelmingly positive. Every participant found the tele-counselling sessions and the group workshops beneficial, and the vast majority said they were able to identify or solve personal or family problems thanks to the sessions. “These sessions with the psychologists were incredibly beneficial”, said Niyider, one of the participants. “I let out so much and cried a lot during them”.

Following the success of the pilot, Bawot launched SANA as an official social-impact initiative in 2025, expanding the programme to include 66 women coffee farmers and pickers across seven producing regions. “I did the pilot as a commitment to the 62 women [interviewees]”, Bawot says. “I never thought I was going to make this into an organisation. But these women and this programme, this pilot, really pushed me to think that I needed to do something more”.

Using feedback from the pilot, Bawot and her team streamlined the curriculum, but the basic outline remains the same: five months of tele-counselling sessions, group workshops, and access to online community and educational spaces. As was the case with the pilot, the programme is open to farm owners and their family members, as well as farmworkers and pickers. 

“We’re open for any woman that is involved in any part of coffee production, including only doing household work or taking care of the children”, Bawot says. “For me, that’s a coffee farmer too, because without her work then the partner, the family, the workers, won’t be able to be fed and have the energy to be able to produce the product”.

The women who joined the programme had a range of concerns they wanted to address, Bawot says, including low self-esteem, lack of communication skills, and a disconnection from their own emotions. Many of them were also grieving, whether that was the loss of a loved one, their children leaving home, or unfulfilled dreams. “We found that most of these women have gone through the same challenges”, Bawot says.

The feedback from those who took part in the full SANA programme was strikingly similar to the pilot. All participants reported positive changes in themselves after completing the course, and they all said they would recommend the programme to others. The vast majority appreciated that the delivery was mostly virtual, something else that was consistent with the pilot.

“This has been the most meaningful program I have ever been part of”, said Sonia, one of the programme’s participants, in the testimonials section of its 2025 report. “Before SANA, I had never spoken to a psychologist. Having access to tele-counseling sessions allowed me to finally share my fears, worries, and emotions”.

“This program helped me realise how much I had been neglecting my own well-being”, said Carolina, another participant. “I used to treat myself as something less urgent, often shutting down instead of asking for support. SANA helped me make a real commitment to myself. It wasn’t just a moment—it was the beginning of lasting change”.

What Comes Next

While there are plenty of projects and organisations devoted to healthcare in coffee production, and others focused on gender equity—and a few that even target the intersection between the two—the role of mental health has often been overlooked. This is especially true for women farmers: If you Google “coffee farmer” and “mental health”, the first several results feature SANA. If you add the word “women”, they all do.

Bawot hopes to encourage more companies and industry stakeholders to get involved and address this clear need. “Mental health shapes how we think, how we interact with each other, how we make decisions, how we show up to the world”, she says. “If we believe that these humans that do a lot of the most essential work in our supply chain, if we believe that they should be living healthier lives, more fulfilling lives, the change has to start from inside of them. It cannot start just by giving them something”.

SANA aims to recruit 200 farmers for the next edition of the programme, with the goal of reaching 500 every year by 2029. Moving to a 100% virtual format is also a priority, to allow more participants to take part who might not be able to attend in-person sessions. Former participants are also kept involved, with access to an educational database that is updated monthly. Bawot says they plan to develop a more advanced curriculum, which she calls SANA 2.0, for those who want to continue their mental health journeys beyond the five-month programme.

In the future, Bawot also hopes to run pilots in other Latin American countries, although she acknowledges the need to understand local contexts before expanding. “For me, it’s really important that we grow slowly, because we are not planting trees here”, she says. “We are working with humans, so the care that we have to put into this is immense”.

Coffee as an industry generates hundreds of billions of dollars every year, much of it on the backs of women farmers. Companies love to invest in projects at origin, some of which have focused on providing healthcare or promoting gender equity. Mental health, however, is often an afterthought. SANA's success offers an example of how the industry can better prioritise the wellbeing of those who do the most work for the least benefit.