An Interview with Connie Kolosvary, Director of Café Femenino (Part I)

Alika Magas | July 21, 2021

I’m snapped out of my daydreaming by the stove-top tea kettle’s high pitched whistle—one I’ve come to hate after watching a few too many horror movies—and rush to pour the hot water into my mug just as a notification dings into the room. An email: “I’m all set!” So, I type a quick reply that reads “Awesome, I’ll see you at 3 O’clock sharp,” all the while questioning if my tea will finish steeping in time. 

And yes, I am aware my drink choice is incredibly ironic. 

It isn’t long before I’m sliding into my desk chair, flipping open my computer, and frantically navigating to Zoom—a ritual we’ve all found far too common in the past year. 

“All set,” I type, hitting the send button faster and harder than I even knew was possible. 

Connie Kolosvary (bottom center) with the Café Femenino Guatemala Group.

And then, the meeting starts. Not two seconds in, my tension eases. Something about Connie Kolosvary, the Director of the Café Femenino Program, disarms my nerves. In an instant, I know something; Connie enacts so much changes, the positive energy her work creates surrounds her. There is no judgement in her demeanor, only excitement, passion, and love. This inaugural interview of mine, it’s all going to go just fine. 

We start with the expected small talk. We introduce ourselves, give some quips and chuckles to ease into the dynamic before getting started. Despite all my initial research, all of the complicated questions I cooked up, I become aware that I’m about to learn more than any academic article could ever teach me. This inspirational powerhouse of a woman has stories to tell.

 ***

Alika Magas: Could you start, for anyone who’s not familiar, by going over Cafe Femenino before we dive in?

Connie Kolosvary: I’ll just give you the quickest version I can, it’s a very long, multi-layered story. 

We are coffee importers. We source organic, fair trade, and specialty coffees, such as Bird Friendly—which has a strong environmental mission at its core. 

We started in 1990 and developed a partnership with our still-current cooperative partners, Cecanor, in Peru. Going back and forth, the founder of OPTCO (Organic Products Trading Company) traveled there, and the companies (Cecanor and OPTCO) grew up together. By 2002 it became clear that the conditions the women lived in was something that needed to be made better if there was any way to do that.

Our partners in Peru have their masters in sociology and they were also the leaders of the Cecanor coffee cooperative. So, they have a very strong social focus as well. When the topic of “how do we make things better for the women in Peru through empowering them” came up in 2002…well, how do you make things better when there’s 70% percent rate of domestic abuse and sexual abuse? I mean, it was really just a hard, hard situation. 

The women were treated kind of like possessions. They did the majority of the work in the home and on the farm. But once the beans were dried and ready to go to market, the men would be the ones who transported and sold the coffee and then that money ended up with the men. Because, in their culture, the men are the ones who would control all the money and make the financial decisions. The men used the income for their entertainment first and then the remaining would go to the family. They’re not bad guys, it’s just the way things were.

So, the women were invisible in this economy. And a way to change this dynamic was to disrupt the traditional economic system. What that looked like was to add a few more cents onto every pound we purchased and ensure the money went to the woman. And with that money, she could make any decisions she wanted to. She could make financial decisions for the first time in her life.

From there, the women would meet and talk about the different obstacles standing in their way, from having success to getting out of poverty. They met and they started putting together some ideas. We, being their only commercial partner, were very engaged in this process of talking with them about what they thought. 

Isabelle, who is the leader of the cooperative that we work with in Peru, called us up and said: “Hey, what do you think about coffee that is only produced by women as a way to bring focus to them. Do you think the market would be interested in that?”

Her idea changed everything.

 ***

The change? It looked something like this: Café Femenino built a set of requirements designed specifically to create space and power for the women involved in the cooperative. First and foremost, Café Femenino requires the woman’s name to be added to the title to the land next to her husbands. More often than not in Central America, the land titles are held in the head of the household’s name. This defers land ownership to the man and, below that, his sons. The woman is completely left out of it. But, with the woman’s name on the title, she won’t be left destitute should she be widowed or her husband leave.

Connie with coffee farmers in Peru.

Café Femenino’s provisions also extend to its roasting clients. Purchasers of the Co-op’s beans are required to donate to Café Femenino’s organizational foundation funding the women farmers’ proposals for their solutions to societal changes within their communities. They can also split their donation between the Café Femenino Foundation (CFF) and a local non-profit supporting women. 

Café Femenino has done so much to change the lives of women in countries with Café Femenino programs.  When Café Femenino women’s groups meet, they talk about problems and solutions. They come up with project ideas, submit a proposal for funding to the Café Femenino Foundation, and then they themselves execute and administer the projects. Café Femenino provides the framework for a unique coffee supply chain that creates space for women coffee farmers to shine.

The nation of Colombia serves as a prime example having enacted, in the past five years, legislative change to ease the process of women obtaining land rights. Because of CF, a kind of snowball effect happened with the women’s advocacy in the country.

 ***

A: Can you speak a little bit about what happened in Colombia?

C: It started out where the women were very timid to speak out. You would go to the meeting to talk with them—and I’m not talking about folks from the city, I’m talking about real isolated and rural places—and they appeared to have very low self-esteem and little knowledge of their human rights. Many of the women shared with me that they didn’t have more than a 5th grade education. They were very aware of that. These women were a little bit embarrassed to put themselves out there. But contrary to what they think about themselves, these women are really smart people, ya know?

With a large grant, we invested two years of training into each one of the Café Femenino programs to increase the capabilities of the women and bring all them up to a certain level of understanding not only what the organization (Café Femenino) was and how it supported their efforts, but they also included self-esteem training. Which would seem kind of funny as an American to think about.

But, the lack of self-esteem, the lack of understanding of Women’s rights, the lack of some math principles, or even how the coffee cooperative works—those were all the workshops we made sure were funded. Of course, the trainers were all found locally. We don’t go in and do the workshops ourselves, we find and support the right people in the country of origin by partnering with NGO’s. 

Once the women started understanding that we’re not only encouraging them but we’re protecting their ability to speak out about all these ideas and do business, they had control of their destiny. They took that idea, and they ran with it. 

It was just so precious to them to have an education and be able to learn more. One of the things I see with Cafe Femenino is that the women view this program as an opportunity to change their lives. Once they realize this, they do not look back. And I’m so proud of them. When they began with Café Femenino, they came along really fast--because when you clear out all the barriers, and there’s no limits to what they can learn or do, they just do it. That’s what happened in Colombia. 

A: So, it was this massive, exponential movement that started?

C: Absolutely, it went fast. 

*** 

Of course, every country is different. Colombia, Connie pointed out, has the narcotics trade; there, the last time she met with the Café Femenino women’s group in Colombia, the cooperative had lost three hundred and fifty people. “Our sharing time always ends up in tears because of the horrendous things they’ve had to endure,” she said. Other communities with Café Femenino programs don’t suffer from that specific chokehold, but that doesn’t mean those communities are void of other hardships, human rights violations, or tears.

Either way, one powerful butterfly effect of Café Femenino is how it veers communities away from cyclical trauma. Poverty, lack of food for the family, abuse, the narcotics trade—all of these things have crumbled because of Café Femenino’s presence in the community. Fundamentally, the culture has changed. 

Connie with Kurt Hans, CEO of Ampersand Coffee Roasters on a Cafe Femenino trip to Guatemala

While it doesn’t mean that the men in the community are mean spirited or bad people, the male-centric focus of the areas’ culture has done a lot to move the communities away from positive growth. One simple example is coffee benefits from multiple layers of forestry and crops growing above them. The men’s most common choice of secondary crop is bananas because they have a high yield and profit value. Women, on the other hand, will choose to grow a variety of other crops that—while they may not be as tantalizing to exporters—can still be sold at markets, and, most importantly, provide for the women’s personal households.

*** 

A: In a lot of my reading, I noticed a big wall barring these communities from change is the male-centric culture these people were conditioned in. But Café Femenino has changed so much of that. How?

C: I think a lot of that starts by asking if the farmers want to be organic certified and produce shade grown coffee. We pay more for organic and shade grown coffee that is fair trade certified. There’s a financial incentive right there that makes everybody more interested, whether you’re a man or a woman. We also pay more, adding a two to ten cent Café Femenino premium per pound depending on the country. Even in the beginning, we knew that the men had to support the women and their wives to do this new thing. We knew that dividing a family or causing any kind of strife inside a coffee cooperative was most definitely not productive and not what we wanted. We knew these concepts wouldn’t work unless these men were on board and supporting the women. 

So, really, it was a change of hearts and minds of the men at the same time. And those men who were skeptical at first came around in a very short time, telling us: “Okay, we get it because my wife, she’s so much better at making sure that our household finances are doing well, and we’re doing so much better. Our kids, all of our kids, are going to school—not just the boys, but the girls, too.” 

I call them the “men of Cafe Femenino” because they’re our allies, they’re so necessary. Many of the men are products of a family where there was domestic abuse. And the boys, the young men, will come to us and say “oh my goodness, this really speaks to my heart because I grew up in a family where it was very difficult because of the violence and the poverty.” The men are also affected. 

We always talk to the men as well as the women; we go aside with the men because we also want to know how they’re feeling. And when we first started this, we did a lot of focus groups talking to them. And they’d answer with: “I’m just really worried that she’s going to leave me if she has her own money.” And then we’d listen to the wives and they’d say: “We don’t want to leave our husbands, but they think if we have money, we’re gonna leave!” But also, there were those women who were in such bad situations that knew with their own money they could get themselves and their kids into safe environments.

It was just a whole bunch of interesting things that way. And ultimately, you’re working with a kind of paradigm shift within the community. The women who are now controlling their own money—immediately, their status rises. 

 And we’re funding programs and projects that the women’s group are running and managing, and that also elevates their status in the community. Men are seeing these women handling leadership positions, and maybe they’ve never really seen the women in that capacity before. It is about changing the men, as well. And it’s about creating space for the women to work. 

Some countries have been slower to adopt that concept than others, ya know? Mexico took us a few years longer than some others; the men did not feel comfortable allowing the women to have their meetings without a guy there watching. We were patient. We knew some day they’d be able to just let us meet. It took a few years but now they’re on board and very supportive. 

It is interesting to watch the different countries and the different groups go through that process.

 ***

We were rudely interrupted. Zoom was going to cut us off in a few minutes because I, obviously, can’t pay for a more “professional” Zoom account. Both Connie and I were put down by this immediately. Even though, over email, we’d expected the interview to only last the Zoom-allotted forty minutes, we both knew there was so much more to talk about.

It was unanimous we weren’t about to quit. 

Connie chimed in with a fix that even my millennial brain hadn’t thought of: “My family and I, we’ve just set up a new meeting and called again. Would you want to try that?”

 I nodded my head vigorously. “Yes, yes. That would be awesome.”

Simultaneously, we both were infected with the same cheek-numbing smile. Forty more minutes meant even more stories about empowerment and change were in store.

But this blog article is already too long by Ampersand’s conventional standards. This isn’t Vanity Fair or QC. We don’t expect you to sit and read for half-an-hour straight. That’s why we decided to split this story in two. There’s so much more to cover: stories, missions, lives, and communities that are fundamentally changed. We can’t cut you all off here. We’re not Zoom.

Keep an eye out for the next installment. We already know you want the rest of these stories.