This is the slogan on one of the government’s recent awareness campaigns. It immediately hit home for us, although not in the way the advert intended.
In the countries where much of the coffee we drink is produced, many millions of coffee farmers fight a daily struggle for survival earning less than a dollar a day. Since this crisis began, we haven’t heard or seen enough from either the Government and/or the mainstream media about the potential catastrophic impact that shutting our economies down will have on both the people working and surviving in the value chains in producing countries.
In a world seemingly made smaller by advances in technology, to us it is imperative that our actions as a society to protect ourselves do not have devastating and long lasting consequences for the communities we rely on for so much. As Martin Luther King famously said, “Before you’ve finished eating your breakfast in the morning you’ve depended on more than half of the world”. We’re just taking a second over our morning cup of coffee to think about that…
Grant Lang, Mozzo Coffee Founder
Introducing Marceline Budza
Founder of Rebuild Women’s Hope (RWH) coffee cooperative and movement in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.
Marceline grew up in Bukavu along with 3 sisters under the care and tutelage of a remarkable mother. Upon graduating from university, Marceline urgently wanted to address the prejudices of wider DRC towards women and create opportunities to truly empower them to build better lives for themselves, their families and communities. So in 2015 Marceline, along with her husband Bertain Bahizire, founded RWH and started working with coffee growers on Idjwi Island, Lake Kivu.
We were introduced to Marceline in Oct 2019 and since then are honoured to be working with RWH buying their fantastic coffee and partnering together through our C2C Fund™ to help bring real and sustainable progression to the community of Idjwi. Initialising this commitment with the creation of the islands first maternity and paediatric clinic - built, equipped and operating since Dec 2020.
Hear from Marceline herself on the direct impact of you choosing to buy RWH coffee in this short video.
