31 December 2018: the question that changed everything
A New Year's Eve visit to the Coffee Cultural Landscape, a cup of coffee and the question that gave rise to the Foundation — "How can we help your community?".
It all began with a cup of coffee.
Community tourism had spent years building bridges between the mountains of Pijao and the world. Across one of those bridges, on 31 December 2018, a group of visitors from the United Kingdom arrived in Pijao, connected to Lotus Children’s Foundation — an organisation with wide experience working for children in Sri Lanka, India, Pakistan and the United Kingdom.
They visited the rural villages, the country schools, the farmers who grow coffee on impossible slopes. And at the end of the visit they asked the question that still guides us:
“How can we help your community?”
It was not a rhetorical question. In 2019 Lotus’s first donation in Colombia reached two rural schools: La Palmera and El Espartillal. New roofs, school equipment, a refrigerator, a solar panel. Concrete things, chosen by the school community itself.
When the pandemic arrived, the alliance did not stop: more than 50 phones so children could attend remote classes, thousands of face masks, seeds and tools for families.
What began as a visit became a long-term commitment, and years later it would take its own legal form as the Frailejones Foundation. But the essence is still that New Year’s Eve question: listen first, help second, and stay.