Brewista x Asoamazonas and ViCafé

Two girls at an Asoamazonas workshop learning basic coffee brewing skills with their new Brewista gear.

Brewista’s partnership with an amazing organization, The Chain Collaborative, started in 2022. 

The Chain Collaborative's (TCC) mission is to co-create opportunities and strengthen capacities for community-led change in the coffee sector. They build relationships with local leaders in coffee-growing regions, cultivate their project design and management skills, and foster the development of their community enterprises for long-term sustainability. Most importantly, TCC's work allows global communities to combat intergenerational poverty and marginalization in the coffee sector on their own terms, and according to their own visions for change.

Brewista provided in-kind gear donations for their Community-Led Incubator Participants in Ecuador and Guatemala. These are the stories of those two projects - Asoamazonas in Ecuador led by Andrea López and ViCafé in Guatemala led by Amalia Saquic. Both of these projects are led by local women creating change in their own coffee communities.

Fabio Legarda leads an Asoamazonas workshop on basic coffee brewing skills with their new Brewista gear.

Asoamazonas

Asoamazonas is a group from the community of Loreto, in the Ecuadorian Amazon. It is a youth-led social enterprise that strives to achieve recognition of the Amazon’s agricultural products, offer new learning opportunities for producers and their families, and give back to their community.

One element of this mission is their Reading Club for children in the community, through which they offer after school workshops for youth to read, do art, and learn about coffee through project-based learning. As part of their Incubator initiative, they launched a series of workshops for 15 children and teens to learn basic coffee brewing skills, and they did so with their new Brewista gear. Through the Reading Club and all of its activities, they hope to expose children to a range of educational and entrepreneurial opportunities in and outside of coffee that they can pursue without necessarily needing to migrate to Ecuador’s capital or to other countries. 

“For us, community-led development means growing both individually and as a group, and seeking common well-being. We have built a community where we care about people and the environment, and as a result, we encourage professional and human growth, while also looking after our surrounding ecosystems.”

Andrea López
Asoamazonas, Ecuador

Fabio Legarda leads an Asoamazonas workshop on basic coffee brewing skills with their new Brewista gear.

ViCafé

ViCafé is a youth-led cooperative in San Antonio Huista, Guatemala committed to improving the commercialization of their community’s coffee, creating local career opportunities for youth, and demonstrating the potential of youth-led coffee production in their region and beyond.

ViCafé’s representative in the Incubator is Amalia Saquic, who started with the organization by working in their café’s kitchen; she moved up to barista and later became the general manager. Amalia describes her experience in the Incubator as a leadership development opportunity to learn about project planning tools that she can put to use now and in the future.

"In the Incubator, I’ve gained confidence to speak up and lead projects, but I’ve also gained friends for the future.”

Amalia Saquic
ViCafé, Guatemala