Last year we implemented a premium project with our partners at Qima Coffee to help fund essential development for the community of Bani Ofair in Western Yemen.
Yemen is facing the world’s worst humanitarian crisis and is, therefore, an extremely challenging origin to work with. Yemeni coffee is hard to source, tough to trace and incredibly difficult to transport, but, despite these challenges the country yields some the world’s most interesting, diverse, and unique coffees.
Our partners at Qima coffee were founded with the vision of using coffee as a vehicle to sustainably improve the lives and livelihoods of Yemen’s rural communities. Generating quality premiums that help improve farmer training and processing infrastructure, resulting in better qualities and cash outcomes for the farmers.
When The Qima Foundation conducted a needs assessment with the Bani Ofair community last year, they discovered an urgent need to re-build three water reservoirs.
We’ve paid a premium on all of the coffee we purchased from Qima, to fund the build of 3x 500m3 Water Reservoirs and an Irrigation Network for the community.
The build has now been completed. As a direct result of this project, there are now around 320 people (from 40 families) in Bani Ofair that now have access to water. In addition to using water for coffee plots and other crops, farmers and their families are now able to use the water for their personal use at home.
We believe that investing back into the coffee chain is extremely important. Seeing direct results like these are a testament to partners like Qima that generate positive change around the world through coffee.
Over the coming months, we will be working with Qima on our next Yemen specific project.
