March 2019: Sustainable Tools Workshop in Guatemala
About the Workshop
In March 2019, Grounds for Empowerment visited Guatemala City to lead our first ever Sustainable Tools Workshop at the Asociación Nacional del Café Guatemala (ANACAFE). With the help of six Emory students, a group of dedicated mentors, and one of ANACAFE’s own coffee market specialist, we brought storytelling and financial planning modules to 10 incredible women coffee producers.
The goal of this workshop was for each participating farmer to walk away with the confidence to own her story, her numbers, and her side of the transaction. From creating farm narratives to tracking expenditures to using the Specialty Coffee Transaction Guide, the 3 days at ANACAFE were an incredible learning experience for not only the farmers but also for the facilitators.
Over the coming weeks, we will be uploading the farm stories that came from our workshop. Use the button below to keep up as we roll out each farmer’s page!
Reflections from the Mentors
“This event defines why I am in the coffee industry: the opportunity to empower producers to own their side of the transaction; their costs, stories, and price at which they sell.”
“Coffee farmers cannot improve what they do not measure and knowledge is in fact a measurable and essential tool to make their coffee businesses sustainable.”
“To me, this workshop is important because it’s filling critical information gaps for farmers—information that the rest of the value chain uses to make informed decisions about the future and that farmers can now use to do the same.”
“Participating in this workshop was a very hopeful and inspiring experience. Witnessing what producers were empowered to imagine, dream about, plan for, and -of course- understand about their own businesses and about the coffee market once they had real numbers and information to ground those thoughts was so powerful.”
“A workshop focused on women producers and sustainable business is the beginning of something extraordinary for extraordinary coffee producers.”
