The Paez (who also call themselves Nasa, or “the people”) is the largest indigenous group in Colombia. Their land is in the Cordillera Central - centered around the mountains of the Cauca departamento. Fondo Paez was founded in 1992, with the primary goal of recuperating traditional agricultural knowledge and indigenous culture which had been buried by centuries of conflict and oppression. Paez community leaders teamed up with Fundacion Colombia Nuestra, a Colombian-based non-profit, to start the “Recovering Agricultural Knowledge” program. The main cash crop of this region is still coffee, and, to ensure a stable income for their members, Fondo Paez organized community based coffee cooperatives. They became more organized, and, by 2000, they were selling coffee through the Coffee Federation’s Specialty Coffee program. In 2003, they produced seven containers of coffee, both conventional and organic certified.

Fondo Paez is completely committed to the self-sufficiency of their people and have a holistic approach to farming. They currently process, market, and export their coffee through the Federation, but are completely independent in their internal decision-making process. They are governed democratically and are extraordinarily well organized. They have been recently incorporated as an association in Colombia with its own legal identity.