We are thrilled to announce that the coffee Market Building for People and Prosperity Project has been extended for a year, which came as good news for the staff as well as cooperatives. The training and interventions made in cooperatives' operational areas have been successful throughout the project as this led to gaining more knowledge, skills and improvement in different business areas. The objective of this extension is to focus on strengthening the resilience of rural community development through economic diversification, creating enterprises in agriculture and associated sectors with young and disadvantaged groups.
The intended impact is to create more decent work opportunities for youth in rural areas.
In the previous years, there have been huge achievements attained within all cooperatives, and this wouldn’t have been possible without the existing country’s policies to support the coffee industry over the years. The policies focus on creating an exceptional environment for foreign markets, increasing coffee productivity across the whole country, and combatting climate change by putting forward environmental protection practices in coffee farming.
To celebrate the coffee project’s extension and the effort made and put in the past 4 years, here are a few notable achievements from these 8 cooperatives:
· The installation of Solar PV units in order to provide extra electricity for the cooperatives.
This installation helps a lot of communities because it reduces the cost of labour that would be spent on hiring 4 to 5 guards. It also allows the members to work more hours as they can now work during evening hours hence profiting more from their work.
· The installation of water treatment facilities in coffee washing stations of all cooperatives helped with the water cleaning process hence reducing the carbon emissions at the washing station level, contributing to a more sustainable coffee supply chain.
· The launch of 8 websites for cooperatives to showcase coffee to the international market, which in turn helped them get more recognition from buyers and build brand awareness. Besides, members are getting better at finding ways to maximize the opportunities that come with their online presence for the cooperatives as well as their communities.
· Delivered accredited business management training and realized a dramatic increase in operating capacity at most cooperatives (812 people trained, 459 women).
· Reduced community livelihood barriers through the widespread increase in the number of women engaged in the project (173% increase), young people engaged, and clean-tech projects undertaken. Young people and women from these communities were offered business training and from that, they created their own business plans which got them loans to start implementing the viable ones. The entrepreneurship training given focused on business planning support, access to finance and post-investment coaching for rural enterprise projects. This is something we are proud to have started in rural communities where people are more in charge and tell others about the possibility of creating jobs for themselves.
Since the inception of this project four years ago, the number of women engaged in activities keep increasing due to the partnership with women targeted schemes in different cooperatives where we would help and train them on how to effectively run their saving schemes and invest in different projects.
The extension year will enable us to leave the coffee communities in a more resilient, economically stable position, able to combat the negative impact on coffee income dependence in the wake of the impact of Covid-19 on global sales. It also enables the communities to be better adapted to the impact of climate change and with reduced carbon emissions through green initiatives.
In addition, young people will be supported through access to land, finance and knowledge, skills development, coaching, training, and networking, thus building resilient and sustainable future businesses. We are certain this will be attained since young people trained in the past on quality, coffee business, export operations management and gender-based violence amongst other topics were able to utilize the learnings in their daily duties and in terms of supporting the respective communities.
Moving forward, the project will sustainably develop knowledge and skills in agriculture and business to embrace dynamic market trends, value chains, innovations and challenges. Challenges Rwanda aims to achieve more with farmers, youth, and women hence building resilient communities.
