The Girls Gotta Run Foundation:
This coffee lot has special significance: it has been chosen to support the Girls Gotta Run Foundation. The Foundation invests in girls who use running and education to empower themselves and their communities in Ethiopia. This coffee lot sponsors scholarships for ten teenage girls in the area of Ethiopia where this coffee has been grown and processed..
As girls enter adolescence, they are more likely to drop out of school as a result of a diverse range of issues, including early marriage, early pregnancy, increased responsibilities at home, increased cost of school, food insecurity, limited access to hygiene facilities, sexual harassment and assault, gender bias, conflict, child labor, and lack of quality education for girls. However, each year of education a girl completes catalyzes change for her future, her family, and her community. Education for girls means income, health, and agency for them and their communities.
This coffee sponsors Zelelam who is 20 years old and is completing her first year at University. She lives in Soddo with her parents and seven siblings and is the first in her family to attend University. Soddo is a town rich in culture and identity. Despite a growing economy, families in Soddo continue to struggle with limited economic opportunity and access to family planning. Since 2013, Girls Gotta Run has worked with the only all-girls school in Soddo, the Abba Pascal Girl’s School, to provide girls with the tools they need to complete their education and build a future of their choosing..
Zelelam hopes to become an accountant. Her favourite subjects in school have been maths and English and in her freetime Zelelam enjoys hanging out with her siblings and reading at her house. Her father is a guard at the local prison and her mother sells homemade goods at the market to support the family. Zelelam looks forward to continuing her education and hopes to help her country when she graduates.
Musetfa Abakeno, his coffee and Falcon's involvement in Ethiopian coffee:
Mustefa Abakeno is a smallholding farmer who owns 18 hectares of land near to Agaro in the Jimma area of Western Ethiopia. The farm and wet mill is located 2040 masl. Mustefa has a small disk pulper which he uses for half of his coffee, the other half is dried as a natural. Due to lack of water in the area and limited space to ferment the coffee, Mustefa ferments the coffee for a short period of time before he moves it to his drying beds: the result is something like a light honey process.
Mustefa has recently registered as an exporter in order to start selling his coffee directly to buyers - something he can now do due to recent changes in Ethiopian regulations. He has set up a small wet mill where he processes his farm's coffee and that of outgrowers nearby. He keeps this coffee separate and dries it on raised beds near his house. Mustefa's outgrowers are all neighbours and have between 4 and 10 hectares of land each. He processes both natural and washed coffee and all of it is dried semi-shaded. Falcon anticipate that Mustefa will have around 600 bags available this year, half washed and half natural. This washed lot has been fermented for eight hours and dried on raised beds for a time span that ranges from 13 to 16 days.
With the support of the team Falcon have in Addis, they are able to work directly with small producers like Mustefa. They see a huge opportunity to drive quality up through direct relationships like this one. They are able to work with Mustefa and his outgrowers on cherry selection and drying and farm management covering all aspects of quality best practices. . This approach to working directly means Falcon can make the supply chains more effective and efficient and maximises the amount of money that goes back to the producers.
( information and images courtesy of Falcon Specialty and Girls Gotta Run Foundation)