I sat down with Lucia Bawot, founder of SANA Programs, to hear the story behind her organization—and how a simple idea grew into something that’s changing lives in Colombia’s coffee communities.
Lucia’s journey started while she was traveling through rural Colombia for her book We Belong. Her goal was to document women coffee producers in her home country, capturing their stories and photographing their daily lives. She didn’t arrive with a strict plan or a checklist of questions. “I just wanted to listen,” she told me. “I wanted to ask the questions no one else was asking—like, How do you feel? What did you dream of as a child?”
What she heard was unexpected—and deeply moving. Women began opening up about domestic violence, trauma, and years of carrying emotional pain in silence. “Many of them said they had never told anyone these things before,” Lucia shared. “That moment made me realize that sustainability can’t just be about soil and yield—it has to include emotional well-being. Otherwise, we’re only addressing half the picture.”
She paused before adding, “You can’t build a healthy ecosystem when the people caring for it are suffering inside.”
Lucia’s own journey with mental health shaped how she saw it all. After years of navigating depression and, later, an autism diagnosis, she began to understand mental health not as something personal and private—but as the foundation for everything. “It gave me empathy,” she said. “It taught me that healing isn’t a luxury—it’s a necessity.”
That belief became the seed for SANA, a program Lucia built together with the women who inspired it. Before creating anything, she simply asked them: Would you be interested in something focused on mental health? Their answer was a unanimous yes.
To start, she launched a small pilot called Beans to Minds. Thirty-nine women joined, receiving virtual therapy, audio lessons through WhatsApp, and group discussions. “At the end, the feedback was overwhelming,” Lucia said, smiling. “They told us things like, ‘I feel lighter,’ or ‘I’ve learned how to communicate better.’ One woman even said her child noticed the change and told her, ‘Mom, something is different about you.’”
That early pilot eventually evolved into SANA—a five-month program blending therapy, education, and community support for women in Colombia’s coffee regions. Participants meet with psychologists who understand rural life, listen to short audio lessons they can fit into their day, and come together at the end for an in-person workshop to reflect and celebrate their growth.
Unlike many development programs, SANA doesn’t measure success by coffee yields or production numbers. Instead, it focuses on what Lucia calls emotional agency—how women see themselves, what they believe they deserve, and the choices they feel empowered to make. “Empowerment isn’t just about income,” she explained. “It’s about helping women clear the emotional and mental barriers that keep them from dreaming freely.”
Lucia describes SANA as a “salutogenic” model—one that looks at what makes people healthy, rather than what makes them sick. Everything about it is designed to fit into real life: therapy sessions between farm chores, audio lessons women can listen to under a tree, and group chats that keep them connected. So far, every single participant has completed the program—an incredible 100% attendance rate.
Now, Lucia and her team are building something new: the SANA Index, a tool to measure emotional well-being through ten key indicators. Their hope is that it can guide other organizations—companies, nonprofits, even governments—toward a more holistic understanding of sustainability.
For Lucia, this work goes far beyond coffee. “We talk a lot about productivity and infrastructure,” she said, “but what if the real starting point is healing? What if peace and resilience begin with emotional safety?
“You can’t separate human health from sustainability. Every bean of coffee we drink is touched by a human being—with feelings, fears, and dreams. If we can help those hearts heal, then maybe the world they cultivate will heal too.”
For October 2025, Swelter Coffee is joining SANA's Give Back Campaign, donating 10% of sales for all our Latina-run farm partners
