In this panel event, as a part of our series "Promoting Wealth for Women in Specialty Coffee," we will discuss the imperative of microfinance and access to microcredit for women in coffee.
In this panel, we'll be discussing the necessary context for financial literacy: Why women? Why now? What is microfinance? & the Learning Loan?
The first in our series “Promoting Wealth for Women in Specialty Coffee,” this panel event entitled “Women Stakeholder Prosperity: Financial Literacy” will define the link between smallholder prosperity and microfinance training for women.
In this series, titled “Promoting Wealth for Women in Specialty Coffee,” we will take a deep dive into the forces surrounding – and interconnected with – money and the accrual of wealth by women in the coffee industry. There are many reasons and ways to invest in women in coffee, but this very big topic of women’s access to finance and credit is key to understanding them all.
ALL WEEKEND: We’re hosting the Story Project in collaboration with IWCA Global at Booth 1054 in the Expo Hall, and hosting short audio interviews with women producers who will be in attendance. Read more about it through our post here.
FRIDAY APRIL 21 @ 10:15am - We’re moderating a panel on “What is Transparency? How to Have Values-Based Conversations with your Logistics Partners” as part of the SCA Lecture Series.
THURSDAY APRIL 20 @ 5:30pm - We’re supporting a Throwdown to Expand Women’s Access to Healthcare at Kafiex Coffee Roasters in Vancouver, WA.
Celebrate International Women's Day 2023 with us as we discuss the intersection of education, quality, and value!
In our 2022 survey, we learned that women working at both ends of coffee supply streams (roasters in purchasing countries and producers in growing countries) are interested in but have difficulties accessing educational and career development opportunities. Those same groups also responded that they were interested in having more connection and communication with others in their supply streams.
As part of our ☕CAREERS IN COFFEE☕ series, this panel event "Accessing Education & Value" is part of our solution to help bridge the gap, discuss the obstacles to accessing those opportunities, and encourage each other to find new ways to grow.
Panelists include:
☀Elvira Conty Nieves
💙Maria Esther Thome-López
💌Nicole Rosaly
Watch the recording here.
We co-hosted the first virtual Careers in Coffee panel with Latinas in Coffee, a social movement on Instagram that highlights and encourages Latinas in coffee to grow and succeed in all aspects of their identities.
La Molienda is back!
💌We may have skipped 2021, but we learned a lot this year about the value of community, so we decided to bring back this women-powered gift exchange. It's a way to start 2023 with gender equity top of mind and celebrate women-powered coffee.
🎁La Molienda is a Secret-Santa-style gift exchange—except all you can gift each other is a bag of roasted coffee that was produced by women.
🔎Why “Molienda”? It's the Spanish word for "grinder." One of the last legs in the long journey of coffee, the grinder unifies. We put coffee beans of slightly different shapes and sizes in, and what comes out is a much more homogeneous whole. All the care, work, and people represented in those wee little beans—this is where it all starts coming together for the final transformation into powerful beverage.
How does it work?
1️⃣It doesn’t cost anything to sign up, but by doing so you commit to buying and shipping a bag of coffee produced by women to someone else!
2️⃣When the sign-up deadline ends on January 6, 2023, Día de los Reyes, you will receive a message with the name and address of another participant.
3️⃣Then, use any method you prefer to send that person a bag of coffee! You can buy local or online—and if you need help with where to start, you can check out a database we created for just that purpose.
To sign up and read more about it, check the link in our bio.
(🫢The first time we did it, we didn’t know exactly what we were doing, so this time it’s back and better than ever. Participating in this year’s exchange automatically enters you into a raffle to win 1 of 3 prizes! Stay tuned for more on those prizes...)
We’re hosting A PARTY.
A party for us, by us - chingonxs in coffee!
CHINGONXS IN COFFEE is a party to celebrate coming together and working hard. "Chingona" means "badass
woman" in Spanish, and this party aims to celebrate all our inner strengths.
Chingonxs are fierce, have powerful work ethics, advocate for others, prioritize local + global communities, and create spaces where everyone can find equity and respect. It's hard work - we deserve a drink! 🙃
After attending the industry day at New York Coffee Festival, or after a very long 2022, come celebrate with us and take a minute to appreciate your passion, your drive, and what makes you YOU!
💫A Vos sos invincible, mujer.💫
This party will have:
💗Drinks
💗Tasty Latinx snacks
💗Una rifita / a little raffle
💗Música
💗An endless cycle of mutual affirmation & admiration
Fiesta is co-hosted by the lovelies @tildeathnyc in Bushwick.
Fri 10/7 from 7-11pm,
603 Hart St. $10 through
the link in @womenincoffeeproject bio or at the door.
You don't want to miss it!
Gracias to @danieblobwalter for making our sick flier!
We’re just doing so much this week, it almost doesn’t feel real that we’ll all be surrounded by coffee people in just a few short days.
If you’ll also be around NYC for the @newyorkcoffeefestival , here are all the ways to find us:
☕️Women in Coffee Cupping, 11am Fri 10/7
☕️Chingonxs in coffee party, 7-11pm Fri 10/7
☕️”Careers in Coffee: Ensuring Accessible & Inclusive Growth” panel, 10:45am Sat 10/8
☕️”Women in Coffee: why prioritize gender equity in coffee?” panel, 10:45am Sun 10/9
For the Festival-adjacent events, sign up through the link in our bio! Only a couple spaces left for the Women in Coffee Cupping! Hope to see you this week, feel free to reach out if you’ll be there and want to say hi!
We're hosting another panel event on Saturday, June 18 - 11am EST.
Many of you who work in coffee are aware that in the past couple of years, due to many global stresses, the price of coffee on the commodity market has been extremely volatile, and has mostly trended upward. This means that the price to purchase coffee has gone up, but for many coffee producers, the expense to produce coffee has increased at an even greater rate.
Everyone's cost to do business has gone up, and we think it's important for producers to be driving these conversations to encourage all market actors to consider any kind of positive change.
The purpose of this panel event is to offer visibility for the producer experience when it comes to talking about price, and attempt to underline some of the more vulnerable aspects to price transparency that are often overlooked. We hope to host a second event in this series to hear from women in export who are seeing rising costs there, as well.
Panelists include:
☕Katia Duke, a specialty coffee producer and previously coordinator of the sub-chapter in Copán, Honduras, of the International Women’s Coffee Alliance.
☕Ana Sofia Narvaez, Relationship Builder for green coffee exporter & importer Caravela Coffee, originally from Nicaragua but currently based out of Guatemala City.
☕Yaquelin Sanabria Caldon, a third-generation coffee grower from Huila, Colombia.
☕Cynthia La Rue, a 4th generation coffee producer from Jinotega, Nicaragua.
Stay tuned this week for more background on this incredible group of producers and coffee professionals. The event will be in Spanish and English with live interpretation available.
To celebrate Women's History Month, we're hosting a virtual panel event on women's access to healthcare. This topic is both local & global: it affects our coffee supply chain every day, but is rarely discussed. "Women in Coffee: Access to Healthcare & Barriers to Reproductive Justice" invites two medical professionals with experience in both the US and countries where coffee is grown to discuss their work to put women at the center.
This event will be held online on Tues, 3/29 from 5-6:30pm EST. Link to register in our bio. Donations encouraged -- proceeds will be split equally between Grounds for Health & TREE (Treatment, Research, & Expert Education) in Kenya.
What will we talk about?
💉The gross inequities in health care systems across the globe that came to light during the pandemic, & the barriers faced by women in minority, rural, or low-income groups in terms of vaccine equity or COVID treatment
💊The relationship between poverty & reproductive healthcare access
😷Areas where women still face stubborn barriers to reproductive healthcare
🏥Areas where programs are providing new access
💉Healthcare in the coffee "workplaces" & how this intersects with racial & gender equity
Invited panelists include:
⏺Ellen Starr, MSN, WHNP, Executive Director of @groundsforhealth
⏺Dr. Michael Chung, MD, PhD, MPH. Professor of Medicine, Epidemiology & Global Health at Emory University, Assoc. Director of the Emory Global Health Institute, & Executive Director of TREE
⏺moderated by Cydni Patterson, Founder of Sweet Finish, Glitter Cat alumna, & the host of "Cascara," a coffee travel podcast on the Sprudge Podcast Network
Benefits IWCA Global
Engaging panelists will address the intersection of race and gender.
Panelists are Ciera Young of Mama's Brew Coffee, Cydni Patterson of Caravela Coffee, and Furaha Umwizeye of Kivubelt Coffee - Teuscher Invest Ltd.
Joe Coffee Company will host a panel event the week after the SCA conference in Boston. For that event we've invited speakers from Guatemala and Nicaragua who represent areas of leadership in Biology, Agronomy, Variety Planning, Cultural Inheritance, Farm Management, Co-operative Organizations, Community Development, Logistics, and Supply Chain.
This event is free and open to the public.
We highly encourage you to RSVP!
Speakers include:
Dulce Barrera
Dulce started working in Bella Vista (Antigua, Guatemala) as a secretary and attention to small producers in 2002. In 2007 her boss realized how important it was to have a small cupping lab so he invited everyone at the office to learn how to cup. At the end it was only her cupping and nosing the cuppings when clients visited. She competed in the National Tasting competition for the first time in 2016. She did not pass to the next round and that inspired her to get her Q Grader Certification. She competed again in the Nationals in 2017 and 2018, winning the first place in Guatemala on both years. In 2018 she made it to the 19th place of 40 competitors in the World Championship, and she looks forward to competing again this year!
Melanie Herrera
Melanie discovered the agricultural world at ENCA (National Agricultural School), which guided her to Zamorano University, and then to the beautiful world of coffee. She started working at Bella Vista mill in Guatemala in 2012 (where she currently works). There she has learned from production to marketing coffee. In this path she has learned and continues to learn more each day. She currently wears many hats at Bella Vista: Sales of green coffee, Customer relationship management, small producers chain, and quality control assistant.
Eleane Mierisch
Although she grew up in one of the most famous coffee families in the world, Eleane did not start her career in coffee. In the 1980s, the Sandinista government confiscated the family coffee farms, forcing the entire family into exile in the US. Turning this negative into a positive, Eleane decided to study to become a nurse. The family farms were returned to them in 1991/1992 by the Nicaraguan government, and most of the family returned to oversee their recuperation from abandonment. But Eleane was settled in the US. She began her career and followed her father’s footsteps; he was a gynaecologist. She worked as a women's healthcare nurse practitioner in the USA for some sixteen years. Illness of her mother brought her to a crossroads in life. She returned to Nicaragua to help look after her mother and be closer to her family. Her brother, Erwin, propelled her to get involved in the family coffee business. From the moment she began tasting the flavors found in a cup of coffee, she was inspired. She wanted to know more about the farms’ agricultural management, so she learnt each step of the value/production chain. She applied the skills she had learnt as a nurse and the attention to small details she had used her whole life to working as a team, and to using a multidisciplinary approach to coffee processing at the family mill, Don Esteban. Mining Erwin’s growing knowledge, they became tutor and student. Eleane learnt everything from picking cherries to the exportation of raw green coffee. She gained valuable experience that she now shares with specialty coffee professionals around the world by consulting and being involved in the Cup of Excellence.
Haisell Beteta
Haisell Beteta has been working for Beneficio Don Esteban since 2014. She knew nothing about coffee beforehand, and everything she has learned has been through experience. She worked her way up in a variety of roles: working reception, where wet parchment is received and green quality is assessed before processing; drying the coffee on the patio or raised beds; managing the inflow, storage, and outgoing coffees in the warehouse; managing exportation of shipping containers; and now finally she is the General Manager of all personnel. Her unique perspective of teamwork and productive work flow comes from a strong sense of loyalty and compassion for her team. She works intimately with Eleane in the Cupping Lab, and she participated in the International Jury of Cup of Excellence Nicaragua 2018.
“All the experience acquired in the last years has committed me to work with a lot of passion in the coffee world. Encouraging the team to focus on small details is what makes us different. Focusing on working with quality and maximizing our resources is the way to success. It is incredible what we can contribute to improve our processes. 80% of our team are women who have shown that we are the more important intellectual work force and I feel proud to be part of it.”
Join us for a screening of the 2018 “Gender in Coffee” documentary and discussion hosted by Kimberly Easson, Founder and Strategic Director of the CQI Partnership for Gender Equity.
Thursday, April 4, 2019 from 6-8:30pm.
GrandLo Cafe - 168 Broome Street, New York, NY 10002.
The series will celebrate exceptionally-tasting coffees, as well, with 4 cupping events in the month of March 2019, which is also Women's History Month. All cuppings will be help at Pulley Collective at Liberty Warehouse in Red Hook from 5-7pm.
