Colombia's "Women's Project" Dedicated to Teaching Coffee Methods to Transform Local Women's Lives

In Colombia, a country with a long coffee tradition, a newer kind of coffee culture has taken shape: a Women Coffee Growers Project that hands women the knowledge to run their own farms and, with it, a better quality of life.

FrontStreet Coffee: An Introduction to the Colombia Women's Project

The project works through cooperatives, and its effect reaches well beyond the field. It turns women from mothers and wives into confident managers and leaders, and it does so one skill at a time.

The change happens through coffee beans.

From the beginning, the program supplied women with the tools to cultivate and manage their farms and to lift the quality of what they harvested.

Participants were trained to recognize ripe coffee cherries and to classify beans during the harvest, a skill that directly affects how much a lot is worth.

Cooperatives and agronomists also worked alongside them to fertilize the land properly, which lifts the quality of the coffee that finally leaves the farm.

Running the business mattered just as much. By learning to improve organizational effectiveness, manage farm waste, conserve water and upgrade the farm environment, the women demonstrated steadily stronger management capacity.

Through training in harvesting, fermentation, drying and business management, they began to earn higher prices and, in turn, to share their coffee with the wider world.

That is how passion for coffee becomes a new way of living.

Today more than 300 women have taken part in the Women's Coffee Project, and the cooperative hopes the number will exceed 700. The coffee itself comes from 46 women growers within the program.

The project does more than help women build their own coffee businesses. It changes their lives and the daily rhythm of their families, giving them a chance to play new roles and to learn skills they had never been offered.

Among those skills are saving and managing money and developing leadership. In the process, the participants gain a stronger sense of who they are, better livelihoods and new opportunities they can trace directly back to the project.

What they produce, meanwhile, is coffee worth seeking out on its own terms, which is where a drinker comes in.

Knowledge Point

Arabica is generally believed to have originated in the Ethiopian highlands and is now widely distributed across the tropics. Repeated mutation and breeding have given rise to a great many varieties.

Brief Note

FrontStreet Coffee is a coffee research center dedicated to sharing what we learn. We hold nothing back because we want more friends to fall in love with coffee, and we are always looking for the people and places behind a good cup.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Coffee from Colombia is the easiest way for a drinker to take part in a story like this one, and FrontStreet Colombia Huila comes from the very region where so many of the country's smallholder projects take root. Grown in the southern central Cordillera around Huila at altitudes of 1500 meters and above, where mountain valleys gather water and humid air, it is washed and roasted medium-dark to draw out black chocolate and nutty sweetness with a moderate oiliness and a full, rounded body. It works as a pour-over or a French press, and it stands up just as well in a moka pot or an espresso machine, where it makes a satisfying americano or latte.

For drinkers who want something livelier, FrontStreet Sidra from the Frontera Estate shows how far Colombian coffee has traveled in recent years. It is processed by the anaerobic natural method, fermenting in a sealed tank where oxygen is limited so the coffee develops deeper tropical fruit, and the medium-light roast keeps that fruit vivid: passion fruit, grape, apricot and preserved fruit, dense and layered, good as a pour-over or a cold brew, a drip bag or a moka pot. And when the goal is a dependable milk drink, FrontStreet Specialty Espresso Blend brings Colombian dark chocolate and gentle bitterness together with Brazilian cream and nut, pulling a fine golden crema and making a smooth, forgiving latte or the base of an americano, a cappuccino or a mocha.