A new international coalition led by Bean Voyage formally launched at the World of Coffee trade show in Brussels on 25 June 2026, aiming to deliver a bundled package of training, seed capital and direct market access to approximately 500 women smallholder coffee farmers in Chiapas, Mexico, according to Daily Coffee News and Global Coffee Report.
The Women-Powered Coffee Coalition brings together five partners: Bean Voyage, the Coffee Quality Institute (CQI), Coffee Circle, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and Falcon Specialty, both publications reported. Global Coffee Report stated that the group will support “Farmer School Chiapas” from June 2026 through July 2027, working with six women-led producer associations through monthly workshops, matched seed grants and a full export facilitation service.
In coverage of the launch, Daily Coffee News reported that women in Chiapas face what the coalition describes as a “triple barrier”: limited post-harvest knowledge, limited capital and limited access to specialty buyers. Itzel Mendoza Olmos, Head of Country for Mexico at Bean Voyage, told Daily Coffee News that “women in Chiapas do the hardest work in coffee and receive the least of its rewards,” adding that the program “is designed to close that gap, not with a single element, but with a market-focused bundle of services that actually increases income.”
Bean Voyage was established in spring 2015, according to a profile in Barista Magazine, and has been developing its Farmer School of Resilient Communities model in partnership with the Starbucks Foundation for four consecutive years. In a May 2025 interview with Barista Magazine, Bean Voyage Co-Founder and Executive Director Abhinav Khanal said that 1,497 farmers had graduated from the Farmer School and that the organization had distributed US$162,760 in seed funding to support their action plans.
Khanal told Barista Magazine that in 2024 alone, Bean Voyage “experienced 130% growth” as it expanded an affiliate model into Mexico and Colombia, supporting 100 additional farmers and scaling participation to 350 per year while distributing US$58,400 in seed capital. The same interview noted that the program’s fourth-year expansion in 2025 aimed to support 250 women coffee farmers in Costa Rica, indirectly benefiting more than 1,300 family members.
In its announcement of the Women-Powered Coffee Coalition, quoted by Daily Coffee News, Bean Voyage said the coalition was named for what the specialty coffee industry “has too often withheld from the women who build it.” The statement framed the initiative around a livelihood question, asking whether a cupping score of 86.60 can pay school fees, medical costs or the ongoing expenses of raising five orphaned children in the Chiapas highlands, and said “that is the question this program intends to answer.”
Beyond the year-long Farmer School Chiapas program, the coalition’s Chiapas focus also includes two October 2026 events designed to connect women producers directly with buyers. Daily Coffee News reported that CQI will host a market-access event on 14 October 2026 bringing together 25 specialty coffee buyers and 25 women producers, followed by the fifth Women-Powered Coffee Summit from 15–17 October 2026 in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, with approximately 150 women producers expected to participate.
Barista Magazine has reported that coffee producers globally face escalating climate volatility, market uncertainty and generational transition challenges, while Daily Coffee News noted that high-quality coffee production does not reliably translate into better livelihoods for smallholder farmers. Against this backdrop, the Women-Powered Coffee Coalition’s launch in Chiapas tests whether combining education, capital and direct buyer engagement can more reliably link specialty coffee quality with higher incomes for women who grow it.
