How do you take your coffee?  Whether it's black or milk with two sugars, why not make yourself a piping hot cup to sip as you read about our client, Teddy Namagembe?  She has a closer connection  to your cuppa than you might think. Time to put the kettle on!

Meet Teddy. She is a 52-year old coffee farmer Uganda and always has been. As a child she used to help her parents on their coffee farm and she knows all there is to know about coffee growing. The work is hard. She works around 12 hours a day on the coffee plantation from 7am until sunset.

Teddy’s main crop is coffee but she also grows beans and corn in order to have something to fall back on in case of crop failure. Since she has started working with Opportunity International, things have improved. She is ensured a fair price for her produce at harvest time through the support of the coffee cooperative. The price can be up to three times the amount she used to receive before the programme began.

Before Opportunity, Teddy sold her crop to local traders who paid her very little. Teddy knows the red coffee beans are of the best quality. However, when she was short of money she often resorted to also selling the green beans before they were ripe, even though she knew she would get less money for them. Now she doesn’t need to use such desperate measures – she can wait for the beans to ripen and sell them later for more profit. She has even managed to put a little money aside as savings. Teddy has faced many challenges but is now looking to the future with renewed hope

Since 2017, our Opportunity International’s Agricultural Finance Programme has provided 6,369 loans to Ugandan coffee farmers and 11,813 have participated in financial and agricultural training.  These tools empower smallholders, like Teddy, to work their way out of poverty.