Leidy Lorena Taborda Beccera, 18
Asprocafé Ingruma
Río Sucio, Colombia

Meet Leidy. She is an 18 year old college student, the daughter of coffee farmers, and a member of the little-known Embera Chami tribe in the remote jungles of the Columbian rainforest.  Leidy is the first woman in her family to attend university, and she is a part of the movement that is happening in this tribe of farmers who now have support from Fair Trade.

For generations, the indigenous people of the tiny village of Rio Sucio have farmed coffee as their way of life. Trying to make a living with small plots of land, often the entire family had to toil long hours in the fields picking coffee cherries in the sun. With the harvest as their only means of survival, school took a backseat for children like Leidy. Generations of unschooled children, led to generations of illiterate adults, some not even able to speak Spanish.

17 years ago, these farmers took a momentous step to transform their own lives.  They banded together to form the coffee cooperative Asprocafe Ingruma and achieved Fair Trade Certification. Over the years they have increased the amount of coffee they produce, improved its quality and sell directly to the global marketplace instead of local middlemen. Their beans are now sold in cafes throughout the United States and Europe.

But members of this cooperative would tell you that their proudest accomplishment has been educating their children. Using premiums from Fair Trade, the cooperative has set up free lunch programs at the local elementary school and offers scholarships for higher education, giving the community’s young girls and boys a hope for a better future. Children are staying in school longer and, slowly but surely, the town is beginning to boast more college-educated nurses, doctors, teachers and business managers. Leidy, who received one of those scholarships, is attending nursing school in Bogota and hopes to return to serve her community after she gets her degree. Gabriel and Gloria, Leidy’s parents, still get tears in their eyes when they talk about this achievement.  Gabriel hopes that Fair Trade will give future generations the same opportunities he had for his family– to put food on the table, to be educated and to be healthy, perhaps with the help of Nurse Leidy.