When it comes to producing exceptional coffee, it truly takes a village. Women are a tremendously influential part of the global coffee community, making up 70% of the labor in field work and harvesting—detail-oriented roles which ultimately translate to excellence in the cup. However, women face steep challenges when it comes to equitable access to career growth, land, education, and credit, representing just 20-30% of farm ownership.

The Village is a celebration of women in coffee, composed of seasonally-rotating coffee from valued relationships with female producers and cooperatives, aimed at highlighting and addressing this gender gap. According to strong research, investing in women increases the sustainability of coffee everywhere—women are more likely to reinvest their income back into their families, their coffee businesses, and their communities. And when access to decision-making and the global marketplace improves for women farmers, quality improves too.

Currently, The Village comes from the Turihamwe IWCA, sweet and exceptionally clean coffee hailing from the Ngozi region of Burundi. Sourced through Jeanine Niyonzima-Aroian of JNP Coffee, this coffee was produced by a small group of founding members of the International Women’s Coffee Alliance (IWCA) chapter in Burundi. At first sip, the coffee presents the honeyed, ripe, stone-fruit sweetness typical of excellent, clean coffees from East Africa. But the hard work of the women of Turihamwe is increasingly apparent as the cup cools: complex and delicate flavors such as melon, orange blossom, rosewater, and vanilla unfurl and lengthen in the aftertaste.

JNP Coffee’s founder, Jeanine, didn’t jump right into coffee—she originally started a nonprofit called Burundi Friends International, whose focus was on youth development and eradicating poverty. It was through this non-profit work that she met the president of the International Women’s Coffee Alliance (IWCA) chapter in Burundi, and they began to collaborate. The IWCA was founded in 2003 by a group of women in Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and the US who decided to come together as a group to change the coffee industry for the better by focusing on female empowerment and connection. There is strong research to suggest that investing in women increases the sustainability of coffee everywhere. Women are proven to reinvest almost all of their income back into their families, their coffee business, and their communities. The work of the IWCA all over the globe fosters leadership, economic development, and sustainability for women and the industry as a whole.

The organized group of female producers in Burundi at the time they met Jeanine was small but still growing, and sought to bring together the female workforce—a group that makes up about 70% of all labor in coffee in the country. However, most female producers aren’t landowners or in a position to contribute to their family’s economic growth, like being able to open a bank account. Their first project with JNP wasn’t, in fact, to import coffee, it was to provide female producers with goats. Diversification of income in this joint effort was profoundly successful, and it led to many future projects focused on economic empowerment and financial literacy—and, of course, trading coffee was interwoven through all of it.

Since their first meeting, the IWCA chapter in Burundi has grown by 20 times its original size and has begun to include men, both male partners of female members and others who are beginning to see the power of coming together as a group to prioritize gender equity. JNP sponsors this chapter and underwrites every purchase of a lot separated out to be women’s coffees—this means JNP purchases, markets, and imports the coffee on behalf of this group of female producers no matter what washing station they work with.

Last year, JNP Coffee purchased and traded about 95% of all coffee produced by members of the IWCA chapter in Burundi. The province of Ngozi, Kayanza is very close to the border with Rwanda, and, like its neighboring countries, also shares a position in East Africa in the Great Rift Valley where it meets the African Great Lakes Region. The great majority of coffee producers in Burundi are smallholders. And, instead of talking about the area of land owned by a coffee grower, as is done in other producing countries (i.e. hectares), in Burundi a grower measures how many trees are owned. On average, producers own about 25-50 trees each, so it takes the harvest of many to make up a large enough lot to market.

Smallholder coffee growers will grow and harvest the coffee from their allotment of trees, then sell the ripe cherry to the washing station, which will then process, dry, and mill the coffee in preparation for export. In this instance, JNP underwrites the premium paid to the female producers who sell the coffee to the washing station, and in doing so they separate the coffees produced by those women so it can be sold as an IWCA product. JNP commits to paying a premium, which is a second payment based on the price at which Jeanine is able to sell it in the specialty market, to all female producers after they receive the initial base payment for cherry.

Through a collaboration with Project Concern International (PCI), JNP began a financial literacy course called the Village Savings and Loan initiative in order to teach women how to save money as a group from what they earn, and also how to work together to offer microloans to other women.

In her own words, Jeanine says: “In fact, second payment or premiums to growers is the only way you can guarantee that they are recognized for their quality. Other than the CoE where very few farmers get to participate and win for their micro-lots to be auctioned internationally, there is no other form of additional or special compensation for farmers in Burundi. [...] We use third parties to assure successful payments. In the case of women farmers, the IWCA BURUNDI manages our premium distribution to all farmers at their respective participating wet mills. We are able to trace each farmer who contributes to making each lot; hence our ability to pay each farmer proportionally her deserving premium. Because we believe that paying good money for their coffees is not enough, we have added on an educational program in financial literacy and helped farmers build their first wet mill, completed in 2019.”

A group of seven women pooled their premiums in order to build their own wet mill so they could control the quality of their coffee through processing. The wet mill they built is called Gitemezi, and it was built to serve the community, standing in contrast to the larger, nationalized wet mills that are more common in Burundi. This is their third year in operation, and they’re aiming to increase their capacity with each new year. The producers they serve are not exclusively female, although they do separate and process cherry grown by women, and this lot comes out of that. The resulting product is named “Turihamwe Turashobora,” which means “Together we can!” in Kirundi.

Through efforts to promote gender equity in Burundi, JNP coffee is honing in on economic development for these smallholder farmers. Financial literacy training has offered a life-changing, forward-thinking perspective to sustain their coffee businesses. And, because it’s not possible for coffee farmers to survive on their coffee businesses alone, this training also applies to the other aspects of their lives. Farmers almost always diversify their income, and training like this can fundamentally maximize their effort to become more profitable. Through interviews JNP has conducted, they have been able to gather information on how individual women have benefited from the premiums they’ve earned through working within their IWCA chapter. In addition to being able to fund their children’s education, uniforms, and school supplies, they are able to buy more trees, fertilizer, and even diversify their income by buying animals like cows and goats.