The community women’s project

Among the fronts the cooperative keeps running, one shows up in almost everything done here and rarely shows up on paper: the work of the community’s women.

Where that work happens

It is in the processing unit, in preparing and packing what the cooperative produces. It is in the field, tending the coffee and the seedlings at the nursery. It is in organising the gatherings — the 2nd Field Day and the first Producers Market were built on this labour, from the catering to receiving visitors. And it is in supporting the membership, helping producers complete and keep current the paperwork public programmes require, CAF registration first among them.

União das Mulheres da Comunidade

The connection with the União das Mulheres da Comunidade — the community women’s union — was brought to the cooperative by Dorca Alves, who pairs that link with steady operational support to COOPERANTE’s day-to-day work. It is out of that relationship that the women’s project stopped being a loose subject and became a front tracked alongside the others.

Why the cooperative treats this as a project

Because it is not diffuse volunteering and should not be handled as such. It is work that holds up processing, organisation and the membership’s paperwork — three things without which the cooperative sells nothing. Recognising it as a project means it enters the targets, the meeting agenda and the plans for infrastructure, rather than only the thank-yous at the end of an event.

What comes next

Progress on this front is tied to the same step that governs the others: licensed processing facilities, packaging and a route to market. As the cooperative’s processing unit comes off the drawing board, this is the group that will run much of it.

Women in the community who would like to take part can reach the cooperative through the contact channels.