"Nicaragua brings people together from all over the world to share ideas
about what is possible. The revolution created this legacy, and it
continues to this day."
- Nicholas Hoskins, Cafenica |
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Earlier this spring, a group of Rwandan coffee farmers traveled to
Nicaragua to study the Nicaraguan coffee quality improvement
laboratories built by nine coffee cooperatives in 2001 with the help of
Thanksgiving Coffee Company expertise and USAID funding. This historic
opportunity of farmer-to-farmer exchange had as its objective the idea
that by experiencing the vision of the Nicaraguans, the Rwandans would
witness that quality improvement of coffee is the single most important
factor in quality of life improvement. It was my belief that if the
Rwandans could see how the most successful quality improvement program
in all of the coffee world had helped poor Nicaraguan coffee farmers
obtain a better future for their families, they would go back to Rwanda
with a plan to build cupping labs at their cooperatives and embark on a
new and powerful road to a better life through coffee.
Thanksgiving Coffee has long worked with the small-scale farmers of
Nicaragua and their cooperatives. This trip was a chance to introduce
our new business partners from Rwanda to our old allies in Nicaragua,
and to let the experts do the teaching. Focused on the work we've done
to improve the quality of coffee, we spent a week touring cooperatives
and studying the ways that they use cupping laboratories to convert
knowledge into power. But this trip was about much more than quality and
cupping labs. This trip was about the possibilities of our world, and
the potential of globalization to be a force for good - if we make it
so.
Author: Paul Katzeff, CEO Thanksgiving Coffee Company |
