MEET
Margoth Rivera
As a child, Margoth harbored dreams of studying and becoming a professional.
Her journey
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 11 women in the region La Legua de Asseri, provides and strengthens economic opportunities for women in the region.
Over the last few years, Bean Voyage has supported ASIPROFE in strengthening its partnership with the Women’s Empowerment Coalition (WECO) to build a communal micro-mill and finance their members’ coffee, enabling them to process their coffee for both export and local consumption.
Between 2020 and 2022, we partnered with five coffee producers in Costa Rica and the artist collective Needle and Frame to create a participatory documentary series. Margoth was one of the five producers who wrote and filmed her own story.
About Ana Lorena’s Coffee
NAME OF THE MILL
ASIPROFE
REGION / COUNTRY
La Legua de Asseri, Costa Rica
ALTITUDE
~1,600-1,700 m above sea level
COFFEE VARIETY
Caturra, Catigua, Costa Rica 95
PROCESS
Semi-washed/Honey
NOTABLE FLAVOR NOTE
Sugarcane, apple, caramel, lemongrass