Ahead of International Women’s Day, The Starbucks Foundation extends its commitment to use Origins Grants to impact an additional 1 million women and girls by 2030

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Kezia Mukamana grew up in the southern part of Rwanda, a country torn apart by genocide nearly 30 years ago, when more than 800,000 people were killed. Since then, the country has faced many issues: poverty; high levels of gender-based violence; degraded, overworked and unproductive plots of land; and loss of knowledge of sustainable farming practices.

By the time she reached her 40s, Kezia was married with four children, eating just one meal per day, with no consistent source of income or savings.&nbsp;&nbsp;

But things started to change when she received a cow and training in sustainable farming practices from Send A Cow, a nonprofit supported in part by The Starbucks Foundation.

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Through its Ikawa N’Inka (Coffee and Cows) project, the cow has provided Kezia and her family milk to drink, a little more to sell and manure for fertilizer which has boosted agricultural production. Last year, the family doubled the output from their coffee trees, which helped provide enough extra income to join a savings program, invest in a household vegetable garden, buy medical insurance and pay for the children’s school fees.&nbsp;

Kezia and her family were able to gift a calf from their cow to support another family, and she’s now helping to share the training she has received with other community members.

“Also, family harmony has improved, and our life in general,” Kezia says. “In this community, women used to move around with baskets asking for vegetables to feed their families. Now they can produce their own.”

Today, The Starbucks Foundation announced that it has reached a milestone of helping empower 250,000 women and girls in coffee, tea and cocoa growing communities around the world, like the one Kezia lives in. The Starbucks Foundation has invested more than $14 million in women and girls, distributed through Origin Grants to more than 20 nonprofit organizations such as Send a Cow.

Ahead of International Women’s Day, The Starbucks Foundation is furthering its goal, announcing plans to impact 1 million additional women and girls in these communities by 2030. It’s part of Starbucks People Positive aspirations focused on enhancing the well-being of all who connect with Starbucks.

As with the initial investments, the next phase of support will focus on the same three pillars: promoting economic opportunity and empowerment, advancing women’s leadership and increasing access to clean water, sanitization and hygiene.

The goals are part of Starbucks bigger commitment to sourcing coffee responsibly, a commitment that extends to all coffee, cocoa and tea growing communities around the world. It’s a commitment that starts with ensuring the well-being of farmers and their families, especially the women in these communities who often face social and economic barriers.

“We have a vision to ensure a sustainable future of coffee for all,” says Michelle Burns, Starbucks executive vice president of Global Coffee, Tea and Cocoa, who also sits on The Starbucks Foundation Board. “This goes beyond farmers and farm workers to also supporting the well-being of all those in coffee communities, helping everyone thrive.&nbsp;&nbsp;

“We continue to see the incredible impact of these Origin Grants on creating socioeconomic and leadership opportunities for women and girls that in turn helps their entire family to improve their lives and livelihoods.”&nbsp;

Breakthrough solutions through partnerships&nbsp;

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To identify the right projects and create the most impact, The Starbucks Foundation seeks to work with stakeholders with the most expertise. That’s why long-term partnerships with nonprofits like <a href="https://www.mercycorps.org/">Mercy Corps</a> are so important.

For nearly two decades, The Starbucks Foundation and Mercy Corps have collaborated to address needs in coffee, tea and cocoa growing communities.&nbsp;

“I’m really proud of the way we have approached working together, co-designing comprehensive programs while keeping the needs and hopes of community members at the center of all we do,” says Tjada D’Oyen McKenna, Chief Executive Officer of Mercy Corps. “We must work in partnership to find breakthrough solutions that will help us solve the world’s toughest problems and achieve more than we could alone.”&nbsp;&nbsp;

Through the partnership, Mercy Corps has offered financial inclusion and entrepreneurship training programs for indigenous women in Guatemala; helped women coffee growers in Colombia gain access to formal property rights and learn about more sustainable land and water management practices; provided mentoring to women coffee farmers in Indonesia to improve their health and economic livelihoods; and supported women <a href="https://www.mercycorps.org/blog/women-frontlines-covid-19-awareness">in tea communities in India</a> in keeping their families safe and healthy during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“When we think about supporting women and girls globally, the real problem isn’t women – their capacity or their confidence – but rather the systems that have been designed to exclude them,” D’Oyen McKenna says. “In order for women to take their place as equals and leaders in their communities, we all need to promote women’s choices and priorities, shift social norms and behaviors, find ways to measure and value the care economy, help women move up the value chain and engage women in discussions and decisions around natural resource management and climate change.”&nbsp;&nbsp;

A commitment to farmers and their families

The Starbucks Foundation’s Origins Grants work complements the company’s commitment to empower communities in coffee, tea and cocoa growing communities. Starbucks is currently piloting several programs focused on creating income diversification and building childcare centers to support coffee families during harvest. &nbsp;

In Guatemala, Starbucks and the <a href="https://wakamiglobal.com/wakami-foundation/">Wakami Foundation</a> are identifying women entrepreneurs in rural coffee communities and helping them create women’s groups to produce high-quality, on-trend products to sell in the global marketplace. They’re also introducing regenerative agriculture initiatives, such as raising chickens to produce eggs to sell locally, and cultivating and exporting izote, a high-demand ornamental houseplant that can be grown adjacent to coffee fields.

Income diversification is important when&nbsp;the coffee yield isn’t enough, given the small-farm nature of coffee production in Guatemala.&nbsp;

Starbucks is also helping fund different childcare center models in partnership with coffee suppliers in countries such as Guatemala, Nicaragua and Costa Rica, so families have a safe place to drop off children while they work. The centers make sure children have nutritious meals during the day and receive educational instruction and social play to support their well-being while schools are closed during this time of year for their summer holiday.

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Photos provided by Mercy Corps and Send A Cow

Woman coffee farmer looking at viewer over coffee tree branches

Ahead of International Women’s Day, The Starbucks Foundation extends its commitment to use Origins Grants to impact an additional 1 million women and girls by 2030.

The Starbucks Foundation reaches goal of supporting 250,000 women and girls in coffee, tea & cocoa growing communities

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The Starbucks Foundation reaches goal of supporting 250,000 women and girls in coffee, tea &amp; cocoa growing communities

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Starbucks has a long history of investment in coffee, tea and cocoa producing communities to address their most critical needs, with a recognition that an investment in women and girls leads to greater impact for families and communities as a whole. On International Women’s Day 2018, The Starbucks Foundation announced a <a href="https://stories.starbucks.com/press/2018/starbucks-partners-with-malala-fund-to-invest-in-women/">new goal to empower 250,000 women and girls in origin communities by 2025</a>.

To reach that goal, The Starbucks Foundation is supporting programs around women’s leadership, access to finance, and healthy homes. These projects aim to break down barriers to education, promote clean water and sanitation (WASH), and create economic opportunities for women and girls. Since 2018, The Starbucks Foundation has made 11 grants totaling nearly $4 million to organizations working with coffee and tea communities across Africa, Asia, and Latin America. These grant recipients include:

Malala Fund | Global, 2018-2020 To support girls’ education through advocacy, amplifying young women's voices and expanding the Gulmakai Network of education activists. This includes the selection of Bondita Acharaya of the Purva Bharati Educational Trust as a Gulmakai Champion, whose project will enroll out-ofschool girls, train girls as education advocates, and work with tea plantations to improve learning outcomes for 3,200 girls in Assam, India.

Lutheran World Relief | Colombia, 2018-2021 To empower women in Tolima, Colombia through improved sanitation and greater economic opportunity. The project will strengthen local women’s associations, increase access to finance through micro-loans, and promote women’s leadership in cooperatives through gender-integration training, ultimately reaching 3,000 people.

Instituto del Café de Costa Rica | Costa Rica, 2018-2019 To support safe places for children of migrant coffee pickers to stay during the day with educational games and tools that promote improved hygiene and well-being at Casas de la Alegria. ICAFE and local partners developed a Health Week for over 500 girls and boys, which included various activities and workshop to promote improved hygiene and well-being for the children and their families.

Barefoot College | India, 2018-2021 To promote women’s economic leadership and wellness in tea communities in India, particularly among seasonal workers. The program will empower women workers with personal skills development and training on technical skills in honey and solar devices production and scale, and also encourage self-care, nutrition and sanitation through greater awareness and better access to facilities, aiming to directly benefit over 3,000 community members.

UNICEF Ethical Tea Partnership | India, 2018-2021 To improve the lives of women and children in Assam’s tea communities. The Ethical Tea Partnership and UNICEF will promote health, nutrition, education, water, sanitation, and hygiene, while also empowering adolescent girls and boys with knowledge, skills, and support.

CARE | Indonesia, 2018-2020 To support women and girls’ economic empowerment and water/sanitation/hygiene (WASH) programs in West Java, Indonesia. The project will engage 1,750 individuals in a tea smallholder village; providing capacity building in women’s leadership, financial literacy and WASH practices as well as greater access to financial services

Lutheran World Relief | Indonesia, 2018-2021 To support women-led community health and hygiene programs for 2,100 households in Indonesian coffee-producing villages. Trainings will focus on improving the capacities of women in leadership roles in addressing and advocating on water, health, and sanitation issues in their communities, including within existing community governance structures.

Roger Federer Foundation | Malawi, 2018-2021 To support quality early childhood education, including water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) programs, in community based childcare centers in vulnerable villages bordering tea communities in Malawi. This project includes improvements and educational programming reaching 1,600 children in 10 preschools, as well as empowerment of management committees and caregivers.

Days for Girls International | Rwanda, 2018-2019 To build leadership and income-earning potential of women farmers in Rwanda by creating access to washable menstrual supplies, entrepreneurial opportunities, and community health education training. The establishment of sewing enterprises to locally produce the supplies and a training program to mentor women to serve as community health educators, allow women to fully participate in their communities with confidence.

Send a Cow | Rwanda, 2018-2021 To empower 15,400 people in coffee growing communities in Rwanda with the knowledge and skills to live healthily and sustainably from the land. The project will improve farm production, access to water, sanitation and home hygiene, and support social and economic empowerment leading to healthier homes and families.

World Relief | Rwanda, 2018-2021 To empower 12,960 women to thrive through safe relationships, healthy homes, and clean drinking water and economic opportunity in Rwanda. The program includes training 1,110 women in understanding government policies, strategic priorities, and women’s rights, and establishing train-the-trainer groups and village level women’s leadership forums to build confidence and awareness at the community and national levels.

The Starbucks Foundation’s 2019 Origin Grants to Empower Women and Girls - Starbucks Stories

The Starbucks Foundation’s 2019 Origin Grants to Empower Women and Girls

On International Women’s Day 2018, The Starbucks Foundation announced a new goal to empower 250,000 women and girls in origin communities by 2025.

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In honor of International Women’s Day, meet Cecilia Valderrama Gómez, Manjula Kahar and Nande Anggun, women who live in different countries but are united in their commitment to improving their communities with the support of The Starbucks Foundation. 

It was a mother’s sacrifice that was nearly unfathomable. In order to save her children, Cecilia Valderrama Gómez knew she would have to send them away. She and her husband and four children lived in El Escobal, a rural area in Colombia that was controlled for 50 years by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

“Because of the conflict, people were living in fear,” she said. “There was a lot of fear in doing just basic activities. We couldn’t dare try to leave the area.” 

The FARC was known to recruit young children and use them as runners. So, when Valderrama Gómez’s children were between 9 and 13, she sent three of them to stay with family in a safer area where they could go to school and wouldn’t be taken by the FARC.

“I didn’t want them to be at risk,” she said. Years passed, and it wasn’t until the conflict ended two years ago that she saw them again. Her son who wasn’t able to go with the others ended up being conscripted by the FARC and later went to jail.

It’s overwhelming recalling all that she went through living in the shadow of the FARC, she said. Instead, she chooses to focus on the present and work toward the future. Today, “I’m happy and hopeful,” she said. “I have always wanted to help others fight for a better life and to help others get ahead.”

Valderrama Gómez, 52, is doing exactly that as president of the Escobal Women’s Association, an organization comprised of 16 women, dedicated to improving conditions for the community after the conflict. About half of the families in her community don’t have basic sanitation services. Many don’t have bathrooms. 

That’s now starting to change due to help from a $500,000 grant to Lutheran World Relief from The Starbucks Foundation, which is targeted toward improving sanitation and access to clean water and also creating greater economic opportunity for women in coffee communities in Tolima, Colombia. 

In 2018, The Starbucks Foundation announced a goal of empowering 250,000 women and girls by 2025 in communities where coffee, tea, and cocoa is grown. Since then, the foundation has given nearly $4 million dollars to 11 programs focused on women’s leadership opportunities, economic development, access to water, sanitation, health, education and more. 

Starbucks currently partners with a number of non-profits around the world who lead the programs, including Barefoot College, CARE, Days for Girls International, Lutheran World Relief (in Colombia and Indonesia), Roger Federer Foundation, Send a Cow, UNICEF Ethical Tea Partnership, Instituto del Café’ de Costa Rica, Malala Fund and World Relief.

Fact Sheet: <a href="https://stories.starbucks.com/uploads/2019/03/Fact-Sheet-The-Starbucks-Foundation-Grants-to-Empowering-Women.pdf">The Starbucks Foundation Grants to Empowering Women</a>

“When you invest in women, you are investing in an entire ecosystem,” said Virginia Tenpenny, vice president of Global Social Impact at Starbucks and executive director of The Starbucks Foundation. “We’re focused on investments that lead to women being empowered, specifically in health, educational opportunities and income, so they can in turn empower their families and communities as well.”

The women of the Escobal Women’s Association may be small in number, but they know how to organize and get things done, a point of pride for Valderrama Gómez. They raise bees and sell the honey locally, providing an income for their families while working toward a goal of being able to sell their honey in the larger cities and grow their customer base. 

They are also about to use those same organizational skills to help facilitate the building of more toilets in her community. Women from her group will meet with families in the area to assess the need. And then they’ll coordinate getting the supplies there via a two-hour journey by donkey.

Valderrama Gómez knows that better sanitation means less sickness and disease. People get sick if the water is contaminated. The closest hospital is miles away. 

“If you have better sanitation, you have better health,” she said. “My hope is to see new projects continue and for the community to really grow, not just in prosperity but in peace.”

That’s the hope of The Starbucks Foundation too, said Tenpenny.

“Women have an instinct to pay it forward,” she said. In honor of International Women’s Day on March 8, meet some of the other women who are working to change the world, one community at a time.

At 3 p.m. each afternoon, about 120 children arrive at Majula Kahar’s home in Assam, India, for her after-school education program. For the next two hours, Kahar teaches them how to read and write. Though Kahar comes from modest means, she does it without pay, committed to helping the children have opportunities she didn’t growing up. 

Like them, Kahar, now 26, grew up on the Moran Tea Estate, the daughter of a tea picker. She attended the local government school when she was a girl, especially unusual for young girls in the region. Due to limited access to school and lack of resources, many children on tea estates who do attend school drop out before high school without being able to read, making aspirations and economic opportunities nearly impossible.

&nbsp;“The after-school program that these children are a part of is for lower-income groups,” she said. “I feel change will come when it is communicated that education is a largest priority. I want the community to be educated and to value education.”

In many tea communities, education is prioritized for boys, with girls being expected to focus on household chores, she said. But Kahar’s mother, a tea picker whom she calls the core of the family, always placed value on education. She encouraged all three of her children to continue school, even as Kahar saw many of her friends drop out and get married early. &nbsp;

Kahar went through a training program to learn how to teach children as part of <a href="https://www.starbucks.com/responsibility/sourcing/tea">Mercy Corps’ Community Health and Advancement Initiative (CHAI)</a>, supported since 2003 by &nbsp;The Starbucks Foundation. Today she is earning her Bachelor of Arts degree at Moran College to advance access to education for children in her community.&nbsp;

“I always had the desire to be a teacher,” she said. “Education was not a priority on tea estates growing up, and after getting training, I began teaching kids in the community. I quickly saw, after three or four months, an improvement in students. They could now recognize the alphabet and write short sentences. One student even began to sing stories in the classroom to friends.&nbsp; This is the inspiration I see in schools. I am happy that I can contribute to my community and society.”

The number of students who come to Kahar’s classes continues to grow. Many, who are eager for the chance to learn, are bringing their friends. She finds room for them all.

Education, she knows, is the key to unlocking a better life, particularly for girls.

“I want to see women and girls uplifted in parts of the world where they are deprived of education,” she said. “I hope one day the woman will rise and be given importance in the world.”

After she graduates from college, she wants to be a school teacher, which she sees as her path to changing the world. 

It’s early morning and Nande Anggun, 48, has not been to bed yet. As a midwife, she’s accustomed to being up at all hours at the side of women who need her. On this day last week, she’s just helped deliver a baby girl – part of the next generation of women in the Indonesian community that Anggun has devoted her life to helping empower.

In addition to being a midwife for the last 26 years, she also works with young children and the elderly, tends to her farm of 200 coffee trees and is also the treasurer of Pembianaan Kesejahteraan Keluarga (PKK), a family welfare organization led by women focused on helping develop women’s leadership, governance, management, strategic planning and more in their villages. It’s rare for her to get more than six hours of sleep a night, but it’s worth it, she says, because she knows that this is how change happens.

“I’m very proud to participate in community activities because I look for how the women in my community can have a better life,” she said, as she sat in the lobby of her local health clinic. 

In 2018 Lutheran World Relief, which works with PKK, was given a three-year grant from The Starbucks Foundation totaling $500,000 to support women-led community health and hygiene programs for 2,100 households in Indonesian coffee-producing villages. 

PKK is leading a series of workshops where women in the community can discuss various topics about health and family. The group is focused on helping women build, and then advocate, for their own agendas in their lives and communities. Often, she said, the weight of caring for the family and making sure bills are paid falls to women, even when they are working outside the home. 

“Women are considered the responsible person for running a family,” she said. 

She recently led a workshop focused on the roles of women and men in families – and how women can navigate conversations with their husbands about being more involved as fathers and seeing their wives as equals. It sparked a conversation with Anggun’s own husband, whom she said doesn’t always understand why she is so busy volunteering her time. 

She puts her hand to her heart as she talks about what matters – she wants to make things better for those who are coming behind her. Women coming together can be powerful, she said. “It’s not always just about gaining new knowledge, but other women might be thinking about the same things,” she said. That is how change begins.

Her face lights up as she talks about her own children, a 25-year-old daughter and her 21-year-old son. 

“As a mother, I always hope my daughter can hope she has a better life than me. I hope she and her husband can discuss everything about the family,” she said.

In addition to the community workshops, part of the grant is focused toward improving sanitation and access to clean water. Women who volunteer with PKK will be trained to help educate people about better sanitation. Grant dollars will help fund the construction of 18 communal water and sanitation facilities in five communities, featuring a shower, toilet, sink and water storage tank. 

While Anggun has running water at her house, many in her village don’t. When she goes to visit friends who only have latrines and no water, she worries for them, she said. 

Better health, better sanitation and women who are truly supported in their communities are the goals that drive her, she said. “When I grow old and look back, I hope that people will remember the work I’ve done and the love and hope I have for people,” she said.

Just then, someone approaches and Anggun excuses herself. A woman in labor needs her. Another baby, part of the next generation in her community, was about to be born. 

Luz Ruiz Salazar contributed to this story.

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3 women changing the world, a community at a time - Starbucks Stories

3 women changing the world, a community at a time

In honor of International Women’s Day, meet Cecilia Valderrama Gómez, Manjula Kahar and Nande Anggun, women who live in different countries but are united in their commitment to improving their communities with the support of The Starbucks Foundation.

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In honor of International Women’s Day, meet Cecilia Valderrama Gómez, Manjula Kahar and Nande Anggun, women who live in different countries but are united in their commitment to improving their communities.

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