SCHOLARSHIPS
CQI Global Coffee Fund scholarships expand access to CQI training for students of coffee quality. Our 2024 scholarship investments included:
GIRLSPLAINING - Bolivia and Guatemala
CQI provided financial support in 2024 for two separate editions of Girlsplaining, an initiative of Ecuador-CQI Assistant Instructor Camila Khalifé that convenes community events “created by women for everyone.” Global Coffee Fund scholarships enabled 26 women to access CQI’s new Robusta for Arabica Lovers class at events in La Paz and Guatemala City.
WOMEN-POWERED COFFEE SUMMIT - Mexico
As a Key Sponsor of Bean Voyage’s third annual Women-Powered Coffee Summit (WPCS), we worked with CQI In-Country Partner Centro Agroecológico del Café (CAFECOL) and the Mexico Chapter of the International Women in Coffee Alliance (IWCA) to provide scholarships for 15 smallholder farming women in Mexico to the WPCS event, where they took advantage of opportunities for training and network-building.
Q COMBO- Ethiopia
A CQI Global Coffee Fund Q Combo Course was the final activity of a multi-year collaboration with two woman-owned enterprises based in Addis Ababa – Q Venue Coqua Trading and roaster-retailer Kedemit Coffee – to deliver training in quality evaluation and cupping to a group of mostly women coffee professionals. This successful activity certified seven new Q Graders in Ethiopia.
PARTNERS IN LATIN AMERICA - Mexico
In 2023, CQI awarded one of the first Global Coffee Fund grants to Mexican In-Country Partner CAFECOL to deliver a range of trainings in sensory evaluation and post-harvest processing for smallholder producers and other local coffee sector leaders in Veracruz. This robust initiative trained more than 80 people and led to certifications of new Q Graders and Q Processing Professionals.
NKG PACE - United States
CQI was proud to partner again in 2024 with NKG USA, delivering training in both cupping and post-harvest processing to the most recent class of NKG PACE Partners.
FELLOWSHIPS
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In our view, a diverse and truly global network of CQI Instructors is a critical ingredient in the recipe for success in our mission to foster a common language of quality, improve the quality of coffee, and improve the lives of the people who produce and process our coffee. Our vision for the future of coffee instruction is local: local instructors teaching in local languages, incorporating local knowledge and local context, to enable quality producing and processing everywhere coffee is grown.
In 2024, CQI provided fellowships to aspiring CQI Instructors in Costa Rica, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Thailand. Those investments helped to expand the roster of certified CQI Instructors in coffee-producing countries.
