Vietnam International Women’s Coffee Alliance Social Company
As a non-profit social organization with a mission to stabilize livelihoods and enhance the status of women coffee farmers, IWCA Vietnam has witnessed many touching stories of the profession. We welcome you and your friends to listen!
“We only have rice and papaya soup. It’s cheap, but we can save a lot of money, and I save it for my children and shopping for Tet. After lunch,we take a rest for a few minutes. Then we collect coffee for the rest of the day. In the evening, we eat and stay for free in the huts.” – said Mrs. Hoa – a worker hired to collect coffee fruits..
Travelling 150km amid the complicated pandemic to pick coffee, Hoa said that for every 100kg of coffee she picked, she was paid 100,000 VND. The amount of money is not large, but the work is extremely hard.
Hoa’s story is the typical story of many female workers in the coffee industry, from farmers who directly cultivate coffee, to hired coffee pickers. Coffee gives them a livelihood, but it also puts a lot of burdens and difficulties on their shoulders.
“When I was 8 years old, I followed my parents to the coffee farm. That day when I was young, I could only hold 4 gourds of coffee, then spread it in a hole for my parents to plant. Now I’m thirty years old, I have grown coffee for half of my life.
People often say that a single grain of rice is nine drops of sweat. We grow coffee and a coffee bean is also nine drops of sweat. Growing coffee is hard work, especially for single women, it’s even more difficult. Every morning, we get up early, ride a motorbike through a slippery slope alone to the coffee garden, then carries fertilizer up the hill, takes care of trees and picks fruit,… In the harvest season, we carry heavy basg of coffee, and then it takes a lot of time and effort to harvest. But I love this job so much.”
For coffee farmers, each coffee bean is precious. Each branch of coffee gives them a livelihood, gives them the opportunity to rise up from the difficulties of life. Therefore, they cherish each tree, each branch, each fruit. They love and take care of the coffee tree like their own children. Because that’s where they send their hopes for a better future life.