Investing in Youth and women

Investing in Youth in Coffee Growing Communities

“We believe in the transformative power of youth. We believe that the future of coffee starts with young farmers, and that coffee can lead to a sustainable livelihood for youth and their families in rural communities.” Joanna Furgiuele, the Fundraising and Program Manager for Coffee Kids, stated during a June 2017 podcast regarding youth participation in coffee production.

An increasingly important issue affecting the sustainability of coffee is the link between young adults and children in coffee communities today and the availability of coffee in the future. The interest in this topic comes from both the supply and the demand side. On the supply side, young adults are not attracted to stay in agriculture as there are many barriers to their entry and they also have more attractive options for their future. Conversely, on the demand side, there is a growing demand for coffee, in particular, higher value specialty coffee. To meet the increasing demand for coffee at a time when many youths are migrating out of coffee communities, it is crucial for members of the sector to find approaches that both motivate youth to choose coffee and ensure coffee can provide them a stable future.

This report, funded by Sustainable Food Lab, HRNS, and SAFE, provides an insight into a selection of programs focusing on coffee and youth across four countries in Central and South America: Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Colombia. Information was collected from resources and interviews with over 20 organizations representing various segments of the coffee sector: retail brands, roasters, traders, producer groups, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The intent of this report is to highlight some common concerns, gaps, and opportunities present across the sector, and to provide recommendations for moving forward to address this critical area of sustainability.

The encouraging finding of the study is that there are many youth initiatives related to coffee. The private sector is supporting interventions that focus on either making the farm more sustainable and profitable or on developing new skills for work in the coffee sector. Producer groups and NGOs are also supporting these efforts, as well as working directly with young people on broader social and economic issues, and helping develop their entrepreneurial and life skills.

Information adapted from the executive summary of the Investing in Youth in Coffee Growing Communities report.

Interview: Kimberly Easson

By: Mandy Tristán

It’s always a pleasure working with empowered and sweet women like Kimberly Easson, the Strategic Director of the CQI Partnership for Gender Equity (PGE). After discussing women’s role in coffee, we chatted about the roles we play in audiovisual production. Gender inequity transcends our sectors and is part of our daily lives.

Why did you choose to work with gender, coffee, and sustainability?

KE: The coffee sector is an example of how collaboration can forward investment and action while serving as an opportunity to improve a global supply chain. What I see, as part of the global coffee sector, is that we have a chance to communicate not only about the quality of this beverage, which of course is key, but also about the quality of life of the people that produced that product, and in particular women, youth, families, and the environment. Many things that we care about as coffee advocates or coffee consumers are things that the SAFE Platform is working towards and that we have a clear way to communicate.

How was the PGE conceived?

KE: The CQI Partnership for Gender Equity came into existence when we realized that in order to better understand and address the quality of coffee and improve the quality of coffee in the global supply chain, we also had to look at what is going on on the ground with coffee farming families and their quality of life. And we also realized that many organizations working in the development sphere had already pointed to the importance of women’s empowerment and gender equity as part of an important foundation of a successful development strategy. So why not in coffee? We realized that in coffee there really hadn’t been much work done to understand how gender equity and women’s empowerment impacts the well-being of the supply chain and the well-being of families, and so we decided first and foremost to do some research that would help to position the issue in a business-friendly way and provide more information so that companies could actually, not only understand, but take action, invest and improve their sustainability programs overall.

Could you give us a brief update on the situation of women in the coffee sector?

KE: The base of many of the challenges faced are confronted even more strongly by coffee-farming women and smallholder families. One of the things that we know, it’s that women in many cases do a significant portion of the work of coffee farming, in particular, those activities that are focused on coffee quality. And yet, they are not necessarily recognized for this work, often time not receiving any pay. They also don’t usually have access to resources in terms of training, any kind of inputs, or technology or tools that could help them be able to improve the work that they do and get better outcomes for themselves, their farms and their families.

What do you think are the benefits of working in a platform like SAFE?

KE: The reason why there are many benefits is the bringing together of different stakeholders in the sector to share information, to learn and to support projects that can strengthen the way that we work together as the sector as a whole. So this opportunity to share learning, to share understanding and work together in a collaborative fashion is really key for us to tackle the critical issues that are facing the coffee sector in the region.

What’s next for PGE?

KE: The Partnership for Gender Equity was able to develop a project methodology (PM) with the support of the SAFE Platform and the IDB (read more about the PM on the next page). That is a critical tool, not only for PGE, but also broadly for the coffee sector, to implement a project that can address these imbalances with regards to gender equity in coffee farming households, communities, and in the supply chain as a whole. We’re working on bringing partners together to apply the project methodology inside of an existing program or to create a program that focuses on gender equity. We intend to have three to four projects over the next three to four years, across the different coffee producing regions. We’re looking to impact 25,000 coffee farming families and therefore about 100,000 beneficiaries so that we can really track and measure the impact of applying the project methodology in different supply chains, in different geographies, and with different partners. Then we can bring together the data and really be clear what’s working, what might need to be tweaked in one region or another, and then we can advocate broadly across the different partners the scalable solutions that are really going to have a transformative impact on the resilience of the coffee value chain.

The Way Forward

How are the issues of gender related to youth and an aging farming population? The answer to this question is not yet clear. To address this knowledge gap, PGE is undertaking a new round of research entitled, The Way Forward: Engaging the Next Coffee Generation.

The objective of PGE’s research is to provide a foundation to better understand youth engagement in coffee production and its impact on coffee industry outcomes; to communicate findings; to develop recommendations for action, and to spur interventions and changes to policies and practices across the industry. This research will be published later this year.