Blog Archives - Women in the world of Coffee

Change can be a blessing or a curse: it depends on how you see it that makes the difference - by Rebeca Valle Anfossi

5/29/2015

Edith with her parents and brother

Edith and her mom, Elsa

Edith on her farm

Edith grew up under the Huancayo sky, in the province of Junín in Peru. Edith and her brother Ivan were very much loved by their parents and teachers, but special attention was paid to Edith who was born with a heart condition.

In order to find a cure for Edith’s ailment, Elsa, Edith's mother and Edith travelled to Lima, to the capital city, where Edith was admitted and operated on in the “Hospital del Niño”. She and her mother stayed in the hospital for 2 months where Elsa took care of her daughter Edith. On Christmas day, Edith was discharged from the hospital and her father Mario and brother Ivan traveled to Lima to take them back home.

Life continued.

When Edith was 14 her life and that of her family had a radical change: her father and uncle travelling to their hometown in a van got into a terrible road accident that would end up taking both their lives.

Over time, Edith’s mom had to make a decision and chose to travel to Satipo in Junin to buy a coffee farm. Elsa lived on a coffee farm as a child and now she would return to work growing coffee again - a life she enjoyed.

The trips were constant, going from Huancayo to Satipo became a common daily event, but Elsa worked the land and cared for her children.

Edith decided to study engineering in the food industries in the National University of Central Peru. She was to leave her mother alone with all the duties of managing a coffee farm. It was difficult to leave her family and it took a lot of strength to do so.

Close to graduation day Edith was told the worse news that a daughter could ever hear: on one of her usual trips to the coffee farm, Elsa lost her life – just as her father Mario had – in a road accident travelling by bus home. There was no graduation party for Edith, just sadness and isolation for what was the most shocking and saddest moment of her life.

Two years had passed since the passing away of her mother when Edith decided to travel to Satipo - just to verify that workers were cutting the weeds and keeping the coffee farm in order. On those trips, Edith’s love for coffee was growing stronger and stronger, slowly conquering her. Every day she was on the coffee farm, Edith would learn new things – her eyes were opening to a world she only knew on a very superficial level.

After her adversity, something changed in Edith. She does not know how she found the strength and energy to move forward, but it was her brother that helped her stop mourning and move forward.

Edith was also indignant by the mistreatment of the coffee producers by the coffee buyers. She thought she could do something different, make a change, but she had no support.

She found the strength to travel to Lima and looked for training courses in coffee. She lived alone at the beginning, but thanks to the scholarship program that she won which supported women entrepreneurs, Edith was in contact with people who understood coffee and learned what she had to do to make sure her mother’s coffee farm produced specialty coffee.

She decided to call her coffee farm “Tasta” in honor of her mother's hometown, Tastapampa. Edith is now one of the most requested coffee producers; her coffee is sold in cafes and gourmet restaurants. “Tasta” also grows other crops now: passion fruit, pituca, yuca, banana…there is even a fish hatchery. Fifteen people with their families work under her charge. Edith's desire is to empower local women and be an example of how taking care of a farm also means taking care of the people who work it.

Edith hopes that what she is doing is making her parents proud of her. I’m pretty confident that they are indeed proud of their little Edith.

The fragrance always stays in the hand that gives the rose - by Raquel Santos Soares Menezes

5/22/2015

Annual meeting for women coffee farmers in Minas Gerais, Brazil

Women farmers from Imbiruçu (Minas Gerais, Brazil)

Women farmers from Martins Soares (Minas Gerais, Brazil)

Generosity is added to those who we offer something. However, when we do well for others, our action has the power to make US better. I have no doubts about the strength of generosity in the history of Cintia Matos and her work with women of the coffee at Coocafe, a cooperative from Matas de Minas and Espitiro Santo Mountains Regions in Brazil.

Cintia began to work in the world of coffee when she was a child. Her parents and grandparents worked with coffee, and they lived in front of a coffee seedling nursery, and since then, she has learned how to deal with the little coffee trees while her parents were working, because she had nobody with whom to stay with her when she came back from school.

It was there that her passion for coffee awoke and would stay with her forever. She studied to become an agriculture technician and returned as a technician to the same company she worked for before her university studies. Almost immediately after graduating, Cintia started her job as a technical consultant and has been with this company ever since.

Her work in the area of environmental and social responsibility won a new meaning when she started to guide and encourage the female groups from the cooperative. At the beginning, Cintia needed to call the women of the cooperative one by one, and try to convince them to join the actions promoted by the cooperative.

Cintia recalls when asking the women to introduce themselves, they used to say: “I’m the so-and-so, the so-and-so's wife”. And then Cintia asked: “But what are you responsible for on the farm?” And the ladies usually responded: “Almost everything!”

So, Cinita encouraged the woman to introduce themselves again: “I am so-and-so, a coffee grower, and also the wife of so-and-so”. With this single change in the way they presented themselves, Cintia noticed an increase of self-esteem, and a rise of their self-worth for their work on the coffee farms. This gave them more security and increased their interest in the female groups of the cooperative. And what is more important: they influenced other women to join them.

Nowadays, the female leaders no longer need encouragement and come on their own and introduce themselves. The result of this movement is already visible in all areas of the cooperative: when we say “women in coffee”, it is more than just these women, it more about their families as well. Loaded with responsibility and knowledge, these wives, mothers, daughters emphasize the quality in production. As we can see, the “quiet revolution” changes the dynamics from the entities that support it, as well as the lives of all women involved, their families, and even the coffee sector organization.

The Women Coffee Group from Matas de Minas and Espirito Santo Mountains has just founded a sub-chapter of International Women Coffee Alliance in Brazil. Cintia has been sharing this experience with others cooperatives in different regions of coffee. This exchange of experiences has given her even more satisfaction in her work. To be involved at the beginning of this change has given Cintia the feeling of receiving more than she could have ever dreamed of when she started this journey with women.

Although silent, the revolution that happens in coffee can have a strong echo. The eco of the actions of these women has a resilient voice called generosity.

Inspiration is like a dessert: some of the ingredients are bitter and others are sweeter, but it’s a unique dessert to enjoy to its fullest – by Kattia Barrantes Zúñiga

5/8/2015

Kattia with her mentor, Grace Mena

Kattia on her coffee farm

Inspiration comes to us in many ways and forms, but as humans sometimes we find it difficult to perceive and apply it in our lives.

I was born in a very traditional and patriarchal coffee-growing family. I am the youngest of thirteen brothers and sisters, and this meant a very difficult environment to cope with because I was born a girl and I wanted a different future: I wanted something different from the education my family wanted me to choose and my dream was to eventually work in my own business and enjoy my independence.

With the support of my mother, my biggest inspiration…now my angel in heaven, and against my father and older brothers’ will, I decided to continue with my studies and achieve a college education. With this I would look forward to help my family and, in general, the sector I grew up in and love so dearly: the coffee industry.

I can personally say that inspiration has been with me since I was little. Hardship and setbacks have been inspirational in my life; they have motivated me to fight and seek my goals and dreams. Just like the phrase says: “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”. Furthermore, there are people who have been the light in my path and they have enlightened me to understand and see how wonderful life is. They did not let me stay down from a fall for situations or by people who only created obstacles to stop me from following my dreams.

One of my inspirations has been Mrs. Grace Mena, a woman who managed to get an important position in the Costa Rican coffee industry, driven mostly by men. She achieved success and respect in a male-dominated environment and never hesitated to do what she wanted and fight for her dreams. All this made me see that if you have the drive and certainty on what you want to do and what you want to be, you should strive to get it, and even if you bump into people who want to shatter your dreams and ruin your decisions, we must not forget that God is the only one who can open and close doors for us, so we must never stop believing and fight for our dreams.

Inspiration, love, and self-respect have made me realize that whining and complaining about problems does not solve anything. What counts is not being concerned of setbacks, but dealing with them and moving on.

To conclude, I can say that for me, inspiration is like preparing a recipe: you need different ingredients to make your favorite dessert. In my case, some of my ingredients have been bitter, some sweeter and full of the motivation that ultimately allows me to enjoy this dessert with a unique sweetness in total satisfaction. It is up to us to keep enjoying these desserts. It is up to us to keep inspiring ourselves with what life gives us to build our dreams with the grace of God.