This special lot comes to us from the Women Coffee Extension (WCE) at the Mbizi Coffee Washing Station. Founded in 2017 by Aline Christine and Odette Uwamariya, the WCE is a women’s coffee cooperative focused on creating a space for female specialty coffee producers to have a stronger voice in Rwanda coffee production. Today, the WCE has over 700 female coffee producer members!
The WCE is focused on educating and empowering their members. They offer services such as family planning, nutrition programs, agricultural practices and even providing cows and goats to their members. These initiatives have changed the lives of many of their members. Coffee production has increased from 3 kgs to 4 kgs per tree. The washing station moved from producing 3 containers to 6 containers of green coffee.
Looking forward, WCE has goals to continue to expand programs for the benefit of their members. They are currently working on Rain Forest certification in order to increase the premium of their coffee. In the future, they have goals to provide cows to all of their members, cover health insurance for a majority of members, build a sewing center for young people in order to create new jobs and even build a Nursery School to help the kids in the area, to name a few!
