The Specialty Coffee Association (SCA) has revealed the winners of its 2020 SCA Sustainability Awards. The winners are Las Manos del Café, Cooperative Coffees, and Dr. Timothy Schilling – the founder and former CEO of World Coffee Research.
In the Project, Business Model, and Sustainability Champion categories, the winners will be announced via the now-familiar virtual event, Re: co Symposium on 16 July. Registration for this event is still open, although the ‘Home Kit’ to go along with it for only $35 extra has now sold out.
The awards are for Project and Business Model acknowledged the outstanding work in sustainability in the coffee industry.
The Sustainability Champion award is an acknowledgement of the work done by an individual to pursue a sustainable speciality coffee sector during their career. Farmer Brothers sponsored the 2020 Sustainability Award.
Las Manos del Café, an RGC Coffee project, promotes a dwindling labour force to participate in coffee production actively.
Their goal is to meet farmworkers, producers, and local organisations’ needs while identifying options to make employment within the coffee sector more socially viable. The project award will be accepted by Angela Pelaez, Sustainability Manager for RGC.
Cooperative Coffees is an importer of Fair Trade and organic coffee, dedicated to improving the livelihood of small-scale coffee farmers, providing services to its members, and building connections with a regenerative and sustainable influence.
The importer has 23 members throughout North America and partners with 54 producer organisations in Latin America, Asia, and Africa. The Business Model award will be accepted by Ed Canty, General Manager.
The SCA said that Dr.Timothy Schilling’s work as the leader of two USAID programs to create food security and increased incomes for widows and orphans in post-genocide in Rwanda.
His creation of the world’s first global, collaborative R & D organisation for coffee comprises one of the most compelling records of contribution to food security and increased livelihoods in coffee-producing nations by any one person of this era.
The selection process for the 2020 Sustainability Awards was managed by a committee of staff and volunteers in the SCA Sustainability Department. Individual votes chose the winners from the committee’s members.
According to SCA Chief Sustainability and Knowledge Development Officer Kim Elena Ionescu this year, the growth in applications to the SCA’s sustainability awards reflected the specialty coffee community’s increasing sustainability engagement.
She added that this year’s all winners had demonstrated tenacity in the face of obstacles and doubts. They were inspiring examples of what is possible with a powerful combination of vision, persistence, and collaboration.
