Do you look after your neighbors as close as your crop or herd?
Who We Are
The Ag Advisory Committee is comprised of community members who regularly interact with the agricultural world through their personal and professional lives and are passionate about raising awareness about rural stress.
The committee was formed after a reporter called us asking for an industry opinion on several ag-related suicides and what preventative measures we were taking to prevent these deaths in the future. This eye-opening article made us realize that we needed to do more to address rural stress in our area, thus the committee was formed.
The Coffee Break Project came through the interest of other rural and frontier communities. Our goal is to come together and do what farmers and ranchers have always done, which is look out for each other. The movement is directed by community members invested in our communities and committed to our slogan “Do you look after your neighbors as close as your crop or herd?”
How We Started
We began hosting presentations in our area, talking with neighbors about rural stress, and encouraging them to ask their neighbors the right questions when checking in on them. We adopted the COMET™ (Changing Our Mental and Emotional Trajectory) model from the High Plains Research Network to empower farmers and ranchers to support their friends and neighbors when they are facing hard times. COMET™ teaches people how to intervene when they encounter someone who is in a “vulnerable space” and help shift the person’s mental health trajectory back to a place of wellness instead of proceeding towards a mental health crisis. It also helps fill a gap and is a strong complement to other strategies that help reduce the suffering resulting from the high levels of stress in rural, agricultural communities.
What We Do Now
We opened our brick-and-mortar location in 2023. The Coffee Break Project hosts weekly coffee groups every Monday and Wednesday morning, where community members are provided with a safe space. The space offers an opportunity for members to reflect on shared experiences within the ag community.
We continue to use COMET™ as our training that is offered to locals as well as other communities. We travel to other communities and states, presenting on the formation of our committee, our marketing campaign efforts, and how to build successful rural grassroots movements, promote and host other intervention trainings like Mental Health First Aid (MHFA), CALM (Counseling on Access to Lethal Means), and Federal Farmworker Health Initiatives.
The movement supports efforts of all sizes, from simply inviting your neighbor to share a cup of coffee to large-scale, organized events that remind a naturally isolated population that they are not alone. Our efforts have resulted in a variety of creative events, including Coffee and Conversations, Pizza with Producers, Ag Socials, and more.
For more information about The Coffee Break Project, contact Hanna Bates, Outreach & Enrollment Specialist at batesh@valley-widehealth.org or call 719-363-1596.
Our Community Members
San Luis Valley Members
Lower Arkansas Valley Members
