Meet Margoth Rivera
and ASIPROFE

As a child, Margoth harbored dreams of studying and becoming a professional.

Those dreams were crushed by a teacher who told her that she ‘wasn’t any good at studying.

As the years went by, she picked coffee on different farms as a way to generate income. The community formed by harvests, La Legua de Asseri, ended up becoming the university that that little girl had been dreaming about.

Working on a beautiful mountain whose coffee fields are sprinkled with drops of water as dusk falls, Margoth began to discover little by little that the opportunity of undertaking training to give added value to coffee would be the start of a new learning experience. That little girl who ‘wouldn’t be any good at studying’ was ready to acquire new knowledge.

For Margoth, the magic of coffee is in the feelings of peace, happiness, and hope that it brings to her. In her experience, coffee opens doors so that hard work can be recognized on a national, and even international, level.

Today, Margoth is one of the women who founded a women coffee producers’ association <ASIPROFE> in 2011. The association, comprising of 11 women in the region La Legua de Asseri, provides and strengthens economic opportunities for women in the region.

Currently, ASIPROFE is in the process of building a communal micro-mill to process their members’ coffee for export and local consumption.

Story written by Margoth Rivera and translated by Alice Mee.

Photos courtesy of Marlies Gabriele Prinzl