GFE in El Salvador: Spring 2020 Business Tools Workshop

After two successful Business Tools Workshops in Guatemala, Grounds for Empowerment hosted our first workshop in El Salvador earlier this month with the support of Alianza de Mujeres en Café El Salvador (AMCES).

Fifteen amazing women coffee producers took three days out of the busy harvest season to discuss storytelling, farm finances, and business planning with the support of ten (also amazing) coffee sector mentors and six Emory University students.

DAY 0: Welcome Reception

The Spring 2020 workshop kicked off with a Welcome Reception at local specialty coffee shop, Biscuit Factory. Here, producer, mentors, students, and others in the local coffee community gathered to network and begin building relationships. At these events, we encourage participants to mingle and then introduce someone they do not know to the rest of the group. Building a sense of community is integral to our workshops’ success and our mission to grow an empowered network of coffee producers.

DAY 1: Storytelling

We began the Workshop on Monday, March 9th with a storytelling module led by Program Associate Aelish Brown. From brainstorming activities to story drafts, each participant spent one-on-one time with mentors and students thinking about how to develop and communicate a powerful market identity. When completed, these stories will be posted on the GFE webpage and shared on our social media.

We closed the first day by discussing farm goals during a resource-mapping activity. This allowed the group to gear up for the next day’s dive into farm financials. One participant appropriately summarized one of the goals of this module by stating that “this has helped me think about where our coffee business came from and where we want to go.”

DAY 2: Cupping and Financial Planning

Our second day started at Cafe Pacas’ Beneficio Vivagua, where each participant cupped her own coffee alongside a team of Q-graders (who are also program mentors). This session provided producers with a deeper understanding of how quality and cup attributes are utilized as business tools when differentiating their products in the specialty coffee market.

Post-cupping, GFE team member and mentor Chad Trewick presented the Specialty Coffee Transaction Guide, which links the new quality information to current and potential prices. These important conversations also informed our next module: farm financials.

GFE Program Manager, Giselle Barrera, helped the group examine the relationship between farm revenues, expenses, and earnings using GFE’s Financial Tracker. In feedback, participants noted that this activity “helped to show the way to financially plan for future work and farm goals that would help their business get ahead.”

DAY 3: Looking Ahead

Our final day was spent gathering perspectives and suggestions from our mentors about the future of specialty coffee, which included tips to help producers continue their planning efforts post-workshop.

The GFE team also outlined our small Seed Grant program as a way to combine and test some of the new skills developed during the workshop, connecting farm goals to financial aspirations.

To close the workshop, each producer shared her (developing) farm story in a 2-minute presentation. The energy and comradery shown during these presentations encapsulates what GFE is all about… building an empowered network that encourages one another through information and experience sharing.

Thank you to our lead local partner, AMCES, to our team of mentors and students, and to the 15 producers who spent three days learning, and teaching us, about what it means to be an amazing woman in coffee!