SANA is a mental health initiative in Colombia which focuses on supporting the mental health of women coffee farmers. The program aims to address the unique mental health challenges faced by women in coffee farming, such as systemic gender inequities and limited access to mental health resources, and to build their emotional resilience and agency. SANA provides “an integrative psychosocial program … that combines several interventions including teletherapy sessions, virtual education, and community-based support.”¹

1. Lucia, please tell us a bit about yourself.

I have coffee in my blood, on my mother’s side. My grandparents were both coffee farmers, but by the time I was born the farms had been sold. But when I was finishing university in Buenos Aires, Argentina, I got an offer to volunteer as a photographer at an event organised by Sustainable Harvest called Let’s Talk Coffee. It was my first time really seeing the coffee industry with my own eyes. The experience was incredibly eye-opening. I felt welcomed, and I got the chance to meet people from across the entire supply chain, producers, roasters, exporters, baristas. It was amazing to have everyone in one place and to be able to ask questions freely.

While I was there as a volunteer photographer, I was supporting a well-known U.S. photographer named Clay Enos. He was at the event because he also has a small roasting company. On the last day, I worked up the courage to ask him, “What do you think is the best path for a photographer, where should I go, what should I pursue?” He said, “Coffee. There’s a real need for storytellers and creatives in this industry. And for you, being from origin, that’s even better. You have a unique advantage: you know the culture, and you’re close to the farms.” That moment really stuck with me.

When I went back to Colombia, I decided to build a coffee portfolio. It was relatively easy; I started reaching out to friends and family friends, asking, “Hey, do you have a farm? Can I come and take photos?” And that’s how I built my first coffee portfolio.

Then I got a call from Sustainable Harvest. I worked with them for a year and a half, not as a photographer, but on the Let’s Talk Coffee team, helping with logistics and customer service. It was one of the best experiences I could’ve had.

After a year and a half, they offered me the chance to stay and join the project development team. But by then, I knew I wanted to pursue photography full-time. For the past 12 years, I’ve worked exclusively with coffee companies – importers, roasters, exporters – many of them based in the U.S., documenting their sustainability programmes. I’ve never done any other type of professional photography. I feel incredibly honoured and privileged that this is where my professional path has taken me.

2. What motivated your choice of focusing on women, particularly in the coffee sector?

That focus came to me unexpectedly. By 2019, I had started to feel that all the content I’d created was my clients’ work. I was proud of it and happy to share it on social media, but something was missing; my voice. I started going through thousands of my photos, trying to figure out what I wanted to say. And it became painfully clear: I had very few photos where women were the protagonists of the story. That was shocking.

I thought, Wait, I’m a woman, I’m Colombian, I’m a coffee professional. How did I not see this? And worse, I was the one behind the camera. I had unintentionally contributed to that invisibility. So, I decided to create a book about women coffee farmers. I knew they had stories to tell, they just hadn’t been given the platform yet.

Little did I know how deeply it would transform me. So much so that I paused my commercial photography career to pursue SANA full time.

3. Photography and mental health work seem like completely different fields. What connected these two areas? What made it make sense for you to throw yourself into mental health programmes?

I’ve been quite open about my own mental health challenges. I’ve struggled with severe depression for many years. And in a strange way, I now see it as a gift. It’s forced me to grow. It’s made me more empathetic, more forgiving, more inclined to offer people second chances. That shift in perspective has come directly from my experience with depression. I’ve come to believe that mental and emotional well-being is the most important thing in life. Without it, nothing else really matters, you could have money, opportunities, a loving family, but if you’re broken inside, you’ll never truly thrive.

So, when I started visiting the women for We Belong, something struck me right away: the interviews with these women started to feel like therapy sessions. These women opened up so deeply, and we talked about so much more than coffee. It was cathartic; for them, and for me. What really stayed with me were the moments when women said, “This is the first time I’ve ever told anyone this.”

4. What inspired the mission?

I realised, of course these women need support too. They carry so much. In Colombia, the armed conflict heavily affected rural communities. That trauma, that weight, has been passed on, and many of the women I spoke with are still carrying it. It became clear to me that they need access to safe, confidential spaces, guided by professionals, where they could begin to unpack it all and be supported emotionally.

That was my biggest takeaway: we’re humans, living parallel human experiences. I truly believe that most of the world’s problems come down to broken human connections and a lack of emotional tools to navigate those relationships. That’s why I say mental health is the answer. And mental health isn’t just therapy, it’s so much more. It’s about understanding emotions – ours and others. It’s about learning tools, building resilience, creating space for healing.

5. What are the social, cultural and physical barriers that make it hard for coffee farmers to seek help?

When you look at Colombia, for example, and read the official statistics, the government is only allocating 2% of the national health budget toward mental health services. And very few psychologists end up working in rural areas. You’ll find social workers, which is great, but they’re not trained to offer the kind of psychological care that’s needed. This is a global, structural issue. This is bigger than coffee. It’s about how entire systems are failing to care for people.

If we zoom in again on the women in rural areas, especially women coffee farmers, there are four key barriers to accessing mental health care.

First, their geographic location. These women often live far from the nearest town, let alone a city. Just getting to a healthcare facility is a challenge. Add to that the lack of local mental health professionals.

Second, the structure of the public healthcare system. Even when someone does manage to get government-subsidised insurance, they’re only entitled to five therapy sessions per year. But to access those sessions, they first have to see a general practitioner, explain their emotional or psychological issues, and then hope for a referral. And once they get the referral, booking an appointment is nearly impossible because there simply aren’t enough licensed professionals. So already, the system is stacked against them.

Third, the lack of community support and safe spaces. Many of these women live only with their families and perhaps a few neighbours. It’s difficult to form a real support network where they feel heard and seen, where they can share honestly without judgment. The stigma around mental health is strong.

And fourth, there’s been no attempt to develop a truly integrative mental health programme for rural communities. You can’t approach these communities with a one-size-fits-all solution. And even more than that, they simply don’t have the time.

Those, I would say, are the four major challenges: access, infrastructure, stigma, and time poverty. And each of those needs to be addressed if we’re going to see real, sustainable change.

6. Are there any barriers to women specifically? 

My friend Kate Monteiro from Falcon once used a term that really stuck with me: “time poverty.” And that’s exactly what I see in so many of these women. Yes, there are issues with access to education, land ownership, representation in leadership, but at the root of it all is the fact that these women carry so many roles at once. They’re caretakers, workers, managers, mothers and wives, and none of that work is paid or recognised. This is just how it is, and there’s no time or space to even imagine it could be different.

So, when we design mental health or wellness programmes for women coffee farmers, we have to take that into account. We can’t expect them to commit five or six hours a day, or have to travel to the nearest town, or to have to do weekly homework. They simply don’t have the capacity.

That’s exactly what we’ve tried to do with SANA. How can we make support effective, but also realistic? How do we keep women engaged and participating at 100%? The answer lies in flexibility, and in virtual delivery, so they can fit it into their already overpacked lives.

We often hear people say, “Women are the future of coffee,” or “Women are the future.” And yes, it sounds inspiring, but we can’t keep calling women superheroes. We’re expected to do everything – and then somehow, we’re also supposed to carry the future on our backs?

The truth is, we don’t even have time for ourselves. I saw that over and over again in my interviews. Women would say, with pride: “I always feed my kids and husband the best food. And whatever is left, that’s what I eat.” And they’d say it as proof that they’re good mothers. But what that really shows is how deeply this mindset is ingrained. It’s seen as admirable to put yourself last. And that reveals something so important about how self-sacrifice has been normalized, not just in the home, but across entire communities and systems.

7. Are there specific mental health patterns among women coffee farmers?

That’s such an important question. And I remember when we were designing the pilot for SANA, that was one of the areas I was most curious about, because at the time, there was so little data available. I couldn’t find anything that offered real insight into that intersection of gender, coffee farming, and mental health.

In the pilot, we saw clear patterns. Three themes really stood out:

1. Low self-esteem
This was present across the board. So many of the women we worked with had deeply internalised the belief that their value lies outside of themselves – in their roles as mothers, wives, or workers. Their identity and self-worth were rarely rooted in who they are as individuals. Instead, it was often about what they do for others. There was little recognition of their own intrinsic worth or needs. And hearing that reflected in their own words was deeply sobering.

2. A lack of tools to communicate assertively

This one really stood out, especially in the context of coffee. Many women expressed awareness of what they wanted, whether in their family dynamics, in farm roles, or even personal boundaries, but they didn’t know how to voice it.

They’d say things like:


“I want to be in charge of this task on the farm.”


“I wish I could talk to my husband about this.”


“I don’t agree with how my family handles this situation.”

But they didn’t have the language or the emotional tools to express those needs in ways that would be heard and respected. And when they had tried in the past, they were often dismissed or judged, which made them withdraw even more.

So, in the pilot, the psychologist worked with them on building those communication skills: how to speak from a place of clarity and self-respect, but also how to hold space for the other person not to immediately agree. We even used role-play exercises, asking, “Okay, what do you want to say to your partner?” and then practising it out loud, safely, in-session.

That kind of rehearsal was a big confidence-builder. And several women later told us, “I was finally able to say what I’ve been holding in for years.”

Of course, this is not a one-time fix. Mental health is a lifelong journey. But having those first tools, just knowing that there is a way to approach a conversation, was incredibly powerful.

3. Grief

This one caught us off guard with its intensity. A significant number of the women we worked with were grieving. Not just one kind of loss, but layered, deep, ongoing grief.

Some had lost their children to suicide. That was heart breaking. And it wasn’t isolated. In Quindío, my home region and one of the areas where we piloted the programme, there’s a particularly high suicide rate among youth under 20. Not necessarily because of the armed conflict, but because of a lack of opportunity. It’s a small state with limited access to stable employment. So many young people finish school and feel lost. Stuck. They have no next step. And in that helplessness, many fall into depression.

Others had lost their partners, some to illness, others to violence.

And then there was another form of grief, more invisible, but just as real:


Grief tied to childhood abuse and trauma.
Many women disclosed having been abused when they were younger, physically, emotionally, sexually. These traumas were often buried, never acknowledged out loud. And the psychologist working with us chose to frame this not only as trauma, but also as grieving: grieving the childhood they didn’t have, the safety they never knew.

This framing helped. Because it gave them language. It allowed them to feel sorrow, rather than just shame. And it also made space for healing.

8. From the experience of the first cohorts, did you identify recurrent problems women in these communities face? 

What we saw were not “rare” or exotic issues, they were deeply human ones: low self-worth, the need for agency and voice, the unprocessed pain of grief and loss. These are issues you find everywhere. But in these rural communities, for women in particular, they’re amplified by:

• Isolation
• Stigma
• Lack of time
• Lack of access
• Intergenerational silence

They’re the same struggles, but experienced with much less support, and far fewer tools.

We did a lot of emotional expression work, not in a forced way, but with great care, creating a space where they could finally release some of what they’d held in. When women’s energy is consumed by unprocessed trauma, heavy grief, broken relationships, or the belief that they don’t matter, they’re not able to step into new opportunities, not because they lack potential, but because they are emotionally exhausted. And that’s where the link to gender equity becomes so clear.

We’re always saying: “Women are the future of coffee.”
“We want women to lead, to innovate, to be at the table.”

But how are they supposed to do that if:

•  They have low self-esteem
•  They don’t know how to assert their needs or boundaries
•  They are grieving, and haven’t been supported in processing it
•  They believe their only worth lies in serving others

We can’t expect leadership or innovation from women who haven’t had the space to even feel like they matter. So, this is why I believe mental health support must become core to our sustainability frameworks.

9. Why Start with Women?

Because, as women, we have one profound advantage when it comes to mental health:


We are culturally more permitted to be vulnerable. We’re more likely to say, “I need help.” We’re more likely to try something new, just out of curiosity.

And when we do that, it creates a ripple effect:
•  In how we raise our children
• In how we interact with our partners
• In how we show up in the coffee industry

And I want to be clear: all the other gender equity programmes out there: financial literacy, leadership development, opening markets for women-produced coffee. We should keep supporting and expanding them. But I believe there is a critical gap: we have forgotten to include mental health and emotional wellbeing in the sustainability and equity agenda.

And without that, we are asking women to lead and progress without not even knowing who they are, how much they are worth, what they need, and without their own toolkit to navigate life. Let’s reframe sustainability in coffee. Let’s build systems where they can actually thrive, from the inside out.

10. It’s inspiring to hear that in the pilot, not only did the women’s relationships improve, but they also began creating informal support networks, referring friends to psychologists, and sharing tools for communication and healing. Looking ahead, what’s the vision for SANA over the next five years? How do you see it scaling, deepening, or evolving to reach more women, and how might you integrate with other programmes like Bean Voyage and Siruma to create that holistic ecosystem of support, growth, and empowerment? And how can people support your mission?

The is no “perfect” programme, but the best way to grow is by learning and adapting alongside the community we serve. Our goal is to keep evolving SANA so it deeply benefits women coffee farmers, addressing their real needs with a curriculum that connects to their daily lives.

In the next few years, we want to expand beyond Colombia and enrol many more women. This year, we’re aiming for 120 participants, then doubling to 240 next year, continuing to grow until we reach about a thousand women across multiple origins yearly To do this well, we’re committed to working with licensed psychologists from each country who understand the language and culture, because culturally relevant mental health support is critical.

I’d love to see a future where women themselves are eager to participate, raising their hands to join rather than being invited. That’s when we’ll know we’re truly making a difference.

For individuals who want to support us, even small donations can have a huge impact. Skipping one coffee a month and donating $5 helps fund this vital work. Since so many women touch the coffee you drink, supporting their wellbeing sustains the entire supply chain’s future. And with a donation of $25 (monthly) you give a woman coffee farmer full access to a SANA program.²

For companies, we invite you to explore our programme and consider sponsoring groups of women. With $3,000, you can sponsor 10 women through a five-month programme, creating a ripple effect in their families and communities.³

We also have upcoming webinars, such as one hosted by the IWCA of Greece on September 10, that explore the connection between mental health and gender equity in coffee, including the role men can play in this conversation. We encourage everyone to join.

There’s growing recognition in the coffee world that supporting mental health is essential, and we’re excited to be part of this movement. We’re grateful for any support and look forward to continuing to connect and collaborate with the community.

¹ https://sanaprograms.org

² https://sanaprograms.org/donate

³ https://sanaprograms.org/donate