Introducing Lotus Blend, our newest offering highlighting women-produced coffees. Temple Coffee Roasters’ Farm-to-Cup sourcing model was founded on three pillars of sustainability: Social, Economic, and Environmental. Temple remains committed to continuing our concerted effort to grow our Social pillar and principles by supporting gender equality, equity, and inclusivity in the coffee industry, where women make up 70% of the coffee workforce. We have had the privilege of partnering with some of the industry's best women producers from Rwanda, Burundi, Guatemala, Honduras, Brazil, and Colombia.
We are proud to introduce this coffee, which is a blend of Latin American and African coffees from women producers, to increase our purchasing and ongoing support for our valued partners.
This coffee project currently partners with the following producers:
Rwanda Rambagirakawa is comprised of 200 members from the Gakenke province, part of the Dukundekawa cooperative. This will be our 4th year partnering together. Rambagirakawa started in 2012 and is a sub-group of the larger Dukundekawa cooperative, which has approximately 1,400 members. Meaning “women owning and growing coffee trees professionally” in the Kinyarwanda language, Rambagirakawa was formed to instill greater gender equity within Dukundekawa. Members are also provided quality control tools, such as an on-site cupping lab, where a trained cupper can evaluate the quality of a producer’s coffee and, therefore, help to determine its potential value.
Guatemala La Morena is from women coffee producers in the Huehuetenango region. This will be our 3rd year partnering together. Huehuetenango is one of Guatemala's three non-volcanic regions and its highest and driest under cultivation, making it one of the best for coffee production. Between 20 and 30 percent of coffee farms are female-operated, and up to 70 percent of labor in coffee production is provided by women, depending on the region. Produced exclusively by female farmers, La Morena is also a Volcafe Way coffee. Since they joined the program, the farmers have increased the quality of their coffee, increased their yields, and, as a consequence, started earning more. In teaching them best practices, their farms are turning out excellent coffee and becoming viable businesses.
Ethiopia Tewabech Tilo is a women-operated coffee producer growing on 6.5 hectares of land in Yirgacheffe, which is quite a large area of land by Ethiopian standards, and she employs 7 workers for the farm. Tweabech Tilo started processing and marketing her own coffee in 2019, after losing her husband 27 years ago and raising 6 children along the way, all of them are college-educated and support the family farm. Tewabech coffee is managed and exported by Konga Trading PLC, which helps bring this coffee to various roasters. This naturally processed coffee lends fruit-forward notes and a full-bodied mouthfeel to the Lotus Blend.
Temple Coffee will be providing ongoing donations of .50 per unit sold to organizations that directly support the coffee community. Our first partner for our Lotus blend is the International Women's Coffee Alliance (IWCA). We have been a proud supporter of the IWCA for over a decade, since 2014. The IWCA focuses on uniting a global network of chapters and supporting the work and growth of women in the international coffee community.
