Vocational training project for women
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Coffee women and families working remote, small plots of land can’t wait for coffee revenues to trickle down to them.
We help women farmers, and their families, improve their professional approach to growing and trading specialty coffee, so they can form direct, productive relationships with coffee cooperatives, processors, importers and roasters.
Research indicates that yields on farms worldwide can increase by up to +30% if women are given the same productive resources as men. During their first harvest after our training in 2015, graduates from our program experienced a yield growth of 300%.
We are the the largest gender program available to train women coffee farmers and their families. We've already helped nearly 37,000 women coffee farmers lead successful family businesses. We have programs in Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo and now will expand to Tanzania.
We invite you to help us expand our efforts to help transform family farms into a family businesses, led by enterprising women.
When we began our program in Rwanda, women coffee farmers grew low-grade coffee and received below- market prices for their unprocessed crop. They did not know the correct color of ripeness and had no understanding of what happened to their coffee “cherries” once sold. They had never seen nor tasted brewed coffee.
Sustainable Growers partnered with local government authorities and 80 farmer cooperative groups to train almost 33,000 women coffee farmers in Rwanda and over 4,500 women in the Democratic Republic of Congo, impacting over 185,000 family members.
Farmers participating in our program have produced more volume of high-quality coffees. Sales revenues to cooperatives have increased and returned more income to farmers' pockets. Most importantly, we've helped women coffee farmers understand the entire value chain, beyond their coffee trees, and the income opportunities that come with it.
In Rwanda, we built a social enterprise called Question Coffee and showcased our program's coffees in a cafe. It helped build a local demand for specialty coffee. The New York Times and Trip Advisor have called it one of the top places to visit in Kigali.
Today, our wholesale business sells our cooperatives' coffee to every major international hotel in Rwanda, the national airline, the national parks and local restaurants. Proceeds are reinvested in our training program.
Sustainable Growers
In 2013, Sustainable Harvest Coffee Importers partnered with Bloomberg Philanthropies to develop a vocational training project for women in post-conflict countries, and called that non-profit the Relationship Coffee Institute (RCI). Its primary goal was to encourage economic independence through knowledge, information and market access. We also created a non-governmental organization in Rwanda to implement RCI’s vision on the ground, called Sustainable Harvest Rwanda. Later we piloted Question Coffee — a social enterprise concept brand developed by our partner Sustainable Harvest — to showcase the high-quality, specialty coffee grown by the graduates of our training program through a cafe and wholesale roastery. It has become one of the best known coffee brands in Rwanda, now sold at nearly every major international hotel, top restaurants and national parks throughout the country. And while we have had many names, we’ve had just one overarching goal: to build income opportunities for women coffee growers and their families by helping them transform into business professionals. We work at surprising scale. That's because we partner with government to reach small farmers at the local level. We tailor our training and trading activities to support the coffee development programs they've identified as important to their economies. We coordinate our program with their authority and plans. Officials are always welcome and present at our well-populated events. We help producers understand coffee, at every step. We incentivize training in the best agricultural practices, from planting to harvest. Expert agronomists teach our farmers how to plant and mother their trees for the highest yields, when to pick the reddest cherries, and how to practice the secrets of de-pulping and drying. Farmers earn reward points for their participation that can be used to acquire items of value to them, including tools and mobile phones. But training doesn't stop at the washing station. Our participants learn to perfect their taste for quality coffee by refining their roasting and cupping skills, too.Who is Sustainable Growers?
Today the name behind this effort is “Sustainable Growers.” It is a non-profit training organization, led by a talented local team, and is based in Kigali, Rwanda. We invite you to learn more about our work and impact.Aligning with government
Seed-to-cup training
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