Strong Women = Strong Coffee

International women’s coffee alliance at the centre of the Latin American Coffee Summit

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The Latin American Coffee Summit will be held online and take place on the 20, 21 and 22nd of November 2020. You can find the detailed program here.

In this event you can find the 3rd annual forum for Women in Coffee, held by The Alliance of Women in Coffee, which aims to empower women in the international coffee community to achieve meaningful and sustainable lives; and to encourage and recognize the participation of women in all aspects of the coffee industry.

Thanks to the Latin American Coffee Summit, which with its generosity and hospitality has become our home, this year we will be able to count on the participation of women coffee growers and representatives from across the IWCA Global Network. The 2020 virtual edition of the Latin American Coffee Summit allows us to expand this exchange and seek a global impact from our 3rd Women in Coffee Forum.

The Third Forum of Women in Coffee aims to:

  • Contribute to the development of personal skills to facilitate the empowerment of women.
  • Visualize the new challenges that the new normal imposes on women in the sector.
  • Deliver skills development models to implement in this new normal.

To achieve these objectives, we will have the participation of women from Mesoamerica, Africa and Asia from the IWCA, who with their success stories and experience inspire us to build these models and apply them.

In 2003, women from Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and the US came together to focus on their shared interest: improve all aspects of the coffee industry by empowering and connecting women. With their vision, and the support of our founding partners, the idea for the IWCA was born.

Over time and with important partnerships , this idea grew to be an established organization that connects individuals, communities, and partners; and in so doing empowers women to lead themselves, their family and communities, and the global industry, to sustainable livelihoods.

The IWCA is a vibrant network of independent organizations, called Chapters, in 27 countries, united by the shared mission to empower women across the global coffee industry.

AFRICA

BURUNDI. PRESIDENT: JOSELYNE NINEZA VICE PRESIDENT: ROSA PAULA NAHIMANA
CAMEROON. PRESIDENT: PATRICIA TOMAINO VICE PRESIDENT: REBECCA KAMGUE
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO: PRESIDENT: JULIE KAVIRA : VICE PRESIDENT: MAMAN LYDIE VECO
ETHIOPIA. PRESIDENT: MESERET DESTA VICE PRESIDENT: MUNA FEJRU
RWANDA. PRESIDENT: ANGELIQUE KAREKEZI VICE PRESIDENT: CLAUDINE KANTENGWA
UGANDA. PRESIDENT: DOREEN RWEIHANGWE
TANZANIA. PRESIDENT: BAHATI MIWILO VICE PRESIDENT: IDA MKAMBA

ASIA

INDIA. PRESIDENT: MS. SUNALINI MENON SECRETARY: MS. DEEPALI GUPTA
INDONESIA. PRESIDENT: FRANCISCA INDIRSIANI VICE PRESIDENT: RAHMA KETIARA
JAPAN. PRESIDENT: YUKO ITOI VICE PRESIDENT: TOMOKO NAGASE
MYANMAR. NANG SEIN MYANING VICE PRESIDENT: THAN THAN AYE
PHILIPPINES. PRESIDENT: PACITA JUAN VICE PRESIDENT: PRINCESS KUMULAH SUG-ELARDO
VIETNAM. PRESIDENT: NGOC ANH DAO VICE PRESIDENT: KIM CHUNG DAO

AUSTRALIA

AUSTRALIA. PRESIDENT: GINA DI BRITTA VICE PRESIDENT: VERONICA PONCE

EUROPE

GERMANY. PRESIDENT: LILIANA CAICEDO SCHWARZBACH VICE PRESIDENT:

LATIN AMERICA & CARIBBEAN

COSTA RICA. PRESIDENT: KATHIA ZAMORA AFARO VICE PRESIDENT: MARIA GABRIELA MIRANDA LORÍA
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC. PRESIDENT: CELINE HERRERA MEDINA VICE PRESIDENT: MARIA ESTAFANI ZAPATA
EL SALVADOR. PRESIDENT: MARIA ELENA DE BOTTO SECRETARY: CARMEN ELENA DE SILVA
GUATEMALA. PRESIDENT: LÍLIAN MARTÍNEZ DE ÁLVAREZ VICE PRESIDENT: ANA CRISTINA GUIROLA
HONDURAS. PRESIDENT: DELMY REGALADO SECRETARY: DIANA OSORTO
JAMAICA. PRESIDENT: ANDREA JOHNSON VICE PRESIDENT: MARSHALEE VALENTINE
MEXICO. PRESIDENT: ROSA CANTÚ VICE PRESIDENT: GISELA PALMA
NICARAGUA. PRESIDENT: GABRIELA FIGUEROA-HUECK VICE PRESIDENT: ALEXA MARIN


NORTH AMERICA

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. PRESIDENT: RENEE ESPINOZA VICE PRESIDENT: LAUNTIA TAYLOR

MIDDLE EAST

YEMEN. PRESIDENT: SAMEEHA AL-ALMUTWKEL VICE PRESIDENT: ENTSAR ALI AL-ABIDI

SOUTH AMERICA

BRAZIL. PRESIDENT: CINTIA MATOS VICE PRESIDENT: MIRIAM AGUIAR
PERU. PRESIDENT: ROSA MARIA VALDIVIA VICE PRESIDENT: ANNA MARIA ROJAS

 

As a global network of organizations in 27+ countries united by the shared IWCA mission, IWCA achieves women empowerment through leadership development, strategic partnership, and amplified market visibility. Through the IWCA Coffee Availability List programs they provide a central point of engagement for those interested in green or roasted coffees sourced from IWCA Chapter members.

Health Benefits of Coffee

Coffee continues to be linked to significant healthful properties

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This is a series of articles regarding the health benefits of coffee that the prestigious National Coffee Association published on its website.

The National Coffee Association is the only trade association that serves all segments of the U.S. coffee industry. Our members include small and mid-sized companies as well as large-scale growers, roasters, retailers, importer/exporters, wholesaler/suppliers, and allied industry businesses.

The NCA strives to provide accurate, verified, and responsible information on key issues, to serve as a resource for its members and the entire supply chain.

 

Americans’ Health Deserves Better than Dirty Tricks on Decaf

The National Coffee Association (NCA) today warned that attacks on decaffeinated coffee will harm Americans’ health and wrongly ignore decades of independent scientific evidence that coffee drinkers live longer, healthier lives.
Read more

Radically Wrong: Scare-Mongering Study Off-Base on Women’s Health

The National Coffee Association warned that evidence does not support the fundamentally flawed findings of a review of coffee’s impact on women health published in the British Medical Journal today.
Read more

American Cancer Society: Coffee Reduces Cancer Risk

Drinking coffee reduces the risk of multiple types of cancer, according to new American Cancer Society (ACS) guidelines for lifestyles that lower cancer risk.
Read more

Coffee Can Reduce Depression Risk by up to One-Third

Drinking coffee can reduce depression risk by up to one third, according to a comprehensive new review conducted by a leading researcher in neurology.
Read more

Independent research by scientists worldwide continues to link both regular and decaffeinated coffee to significant (and surprising) healthful properties.
Read more

The photo that closes this interesting article is the same on the packages of our ArtonCafé coffee blends.

 

Welcome to Black Ivory Coffee

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One of the world’s rarest coffee, naturally refined by elephants. The most distinctive cup you could ever try

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The mission of Black Ivory Coffee is to take a negative situation, namely human-elephant conflict and turn it into a positive one by creating a luxury product that helps not hurts elephants. It must also taste great, be distinctive and create a lasting, positive and memorable experience for the guest.

The Black Ivory Coffee is a very distinctive cup with notes of chocolate/cacao, spice, (tobacco and leather), a hint of grass and red cherry. Black Ivory Coffee lacks bitterness and is delicate, almost tea-like in its complexity. While taste is subjective, we believe this will be the most distinctive cup you will ever taste.

Harvesting process

Ten years in the making, Black Ivory Coffee is created through a process whereby coffee cherries are naturally refined by Thai elephants in the remote rural province of Surin, Thailand.

It begins with selecting the best 100% Thai Arabica cherries that have been picked from an altitude as high as 1500 meters. Next, the cherries are brought to Surin where each elephant care-giving family mixes the cherries with the elephant’s favorite food. Examples include: rice, banana and tamarind. This combination helps to ensure that the elephant enjoys the snack and that there is additional nutritional benefit. Each elephant has its own recipe as their taste, just like humans, is subjective. Once ingested, the digestive process will begin and this can take between 12 to 72 hours depending on the amount of food already in the stomach of the elephant.

Once deposited by the elephants, the individual cherries are hand-picked by the elephant care-givers.

The picked cherries are then brought to the local school where final year high school students are paid to wash, rake and sun dry the coffee cherries.

Once dried to a certain percentage of moisture the cherries are then hulled and sorted by machine for density and by hand for physical defects and size. Only the largest sizes are chosen to ensure an even roast.
Next, the beans are roasted, packed in a one-way valve bag to ensure freshness and shipped out. To ensure freshness, Black Ivory Coffee roasts to order and does not warehouse roasted coffee.
Approximately 33 kilograms of coffee cherries are required to produce just one kilogram of Black Ivory Coffee.

Social responsibility

Because of their commitment to elephant conservation and welfare, Black Ivory Coffee supports the Golden Triangle Asian Elephant Foundation in order to educate the children of elephant care-giving families on the plight of wild elephants in Thailand and on the issue of human elephant conflict. Children travel to a national park where for the first time in their life they see elephants in the wild. For most this also represents the first trip outside of their village. Production of Black Ivory Coffee also provides valuable income generation for elephant care-giving families as well as students of the local high school who are taught how to wash and dry our coffee. The money earned generally tends to support aging parents, health expenses, school fees, food, and clothing. Some of the students are also saving for university. Black Ivory Coffee pays 350 THB* (Thai Baht) per kilogram for picked coffee. One can pick this quantity in roughly 15 minutes. To provide some perspective, an average coffee worker in Thailand earns 7 THB per kilogram in Thailand and in Surin province one can earn approximately 200 THB for 7 hours work harvesting rice.


Press review

“…oddly alluring, this is not just one of the world’s most unusual specialty coffees. At $500 per pound, it’s also among the world’s priciest. For now, only the wealthy or well-traveled have access to the cuppa, which is called Black Ivory Coffee.”
Read the full article here

“But he’s serious about his coffee. “[He] wouldn’t spend 10 years and put [his] life savings on this if [he] didn’t think it’s for real, or [he] thought it was just going to be an overnight gag.”
Read the full article here

“This is no average cup o’ joe, but don’t knock it until you try it.”
Read the full article here

 

*1 THB = €0.028