International Women's Day 2018

Equipping women with knowledge and skills in cupping and best production practices improves cup quality and volume. We even find that women-grown lots return a .5 point higher cup score than non women-grown lots from the same cooperative.

Increased value from coffee returning to women means greater investment in the family, leading to improved livelihoods. Studies show that women invest 90% of their income in the household, while men invest only 30-40%. This investment leads to transformational change in coffee-growing communities, creating supply chain sustainability.

Our impact on women farmers

Our story of sourcing women's coffee begins in 2003, when we partnered with the Las Hermanas women's growing collective in Nicaragua. Leading roasters like Peet's Coffee and Cafe Moto became long-term buyers of this high-quality coffee, which we still source to this day. In many ways, the Las Hermanas brand helped put women growers on the map in the specialty coffee industry, highlighting the possibilities of strong, dedicated women farmers to thrive in marketplace.

With the success of Las Hermanas, we began to seek out and develop relationships with women growers from around the globe, and are fortunate to have developed particularly strong relationships with women farmers in Rwanda, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras and Colombia that continue to grow. During that time, we've achieved some important milestones:

• We've sourced 6.85 million pounds of women coffee since 2003, when we imported our first women's coffee, Las Hermanas
• In 2017, we sourced 679,000 pounds of women-grown coffee
• In 2013, we partnered with Bloomberg Philanthropies to create the Relationship Coffee Institute (RCI), an independent nonprofit dedicated to improving the lives of coffee farmers, especially women, through technical training and market access. Since its launch, RCI has enrolled more than 28,000 women farmers, making it the largest gender-based coffee program in the world. RCI's innovative, market-based initiatives in Rwanda have already more than doubled productivity and income for thousands of participating women farmers.
• Since we’re not experts in gender equity, we partner with them to enhance our impact. In 2017, Sustainable Harvest® and the Relationship Coffee Institute collaborated with CQI’s Partnership for Gender Equity (PGE). Together, we piloted PGE’s Common Measurement Framework for Gender in Coffee, a new tool to improve the industry’s investments in gender equity.

Mujeres Cafeteras, Colombia

Coocentral’s Mujeres Cafeteras (Women’s Coffee) program started from an initiative to teach and empower 300 women coffee growers in the municipalities of Garzón, Pital, and El Agrado. Through Best Agricultural Practices training, the women learn technical skills in coffee harvesting, fermentation, and drying that they use to develop a differentiated cup profile with added value.

Tiga Raja Women's Lot, Sumatra

Among all the coffee collectors and community organizers for the Tiga Raja Mill there is only one woman, Seri Simarmata. She is a rarity in this male-dominated industry, and remarkable coffee leader. Over time, she has united 15 women growers to form produce this special lot.

Soppexcca, Nicaragua

Like many cooperatives, there was a time when Soppexcca struggled with its financial management. However, beginning in the early 2000s, a charismatic and inspiring leader named Fatima Ismael led Soppexcca from a state of debt and low member trust to one of the most successful cooperatives in Nicaragua with solid businesses practices, extremely transparent operations, and progressive initiatives to improve gender equality within the co-op.

COMUCAP, Honduras

COMUCAP is an organization of women growers who formed their own growing collective after suffering from domestic violence and economic insecurity due to gender discrimintation. Empowered with new economic opportunity through specialty coffee and other products, many of the women have been able to purchase their own land, perpetuating economic stability and freedom while breaking a cycle of abuse.

Donate to the Relationship Coffee Institute

RCI is currently seeking support to build out professional-grade cupping labs in Rwanda to improve market access and promote a shared language of taste between producers and buyers in the country. Learn more about the initiative in CoffeeTalk Magazine here, and make your donation to the initiative here.

Donate to the IWCA

The International Women's Coffee Alliance (IWCA) leads women's empowerment in the international coffee industry by supporting and growing a network of self-organized, self-governing, women-led chapters across the globe. This International Women's Day, give a boost to their critical work by making a donation here.

Double Your Impact

Through this special program, we're reinvesting all profits from 2017 Rwanda harvest coffees into Rwandan farmers through the Relationship Coffee Institute. Every purchase will not only provide growers with premium prices for their incredible coffees, but will also be used to make new investments in cooperative infrastructure, such as cupping labs and washing stations. Click here to learn more and request a sample of our Rwanda offerings before they sell out!