“Raise Your Cup” Campaign Shines Light on 15 Women Coffee and Cacao Farmers Who Tell Their True Stories That Often Stay in the Dark

Unvarnished profiles of women farmers are shared in a new 15-day Kindred Sparks and Equal Origins educational campaign, a compelling way to celebrate 2026 as the International Year of the Woman Farmer

WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The inaugural “Raise Your Cup” awareness campaign launches on October 1, 2026. It is a coalition effort built to support the sourcing relationships and supply chain resilience that depend on the women who grow and process the coffee and cocoa that millions of people globally consume daily. “Raise Your Cup” encourages individuals to take action in support of this often unknown sector of coffee and cacao farming and production. Its mantra is “Recognize · Uplift · Invest — in the women who farm the coffee and cocoa we all depend on.”

A collective of international coffee companies, including traders, distributors, retail cafés, and brands, decided more had to be done to tell reverent stories about women farmers in coffee and cacao around the world. The decision? To launch the “Raise Your Cup” campaign for fifteen days in October, when each day a reverent story will be shared — in her own words — in a longer website and newsletter feature and in a short social media post. Each story is supported and made possible by a story partner: a business or organization in the coffee or cacao trade. “Raise Your Cup” launches on October 1, 2026, International Coffee Day, and culminates on International Day of Rural Women, October 15, 2026.

“Raise Your Cup” features a public-facing grid of story profiles posted one each campaign day. The stories are in her words, in English and her native language, and focus on the women who own farms and also the often-unseen workforce of women who plant, pick, sort, and sustain farms. Each square on the grid pairs a woman farmer with the partner company working alongside her, so the story of the work and the story of the partnership are told together.

“Raise Your Cup” is targeted at enthusiastic coffee and chocolate consumers around the world who may consume daily with little understanding of what women in coffee and cacao production face in their work. Kindred Sparks, with support from nonprofit Equal Origins, is the coalition producing “Raise Your Cup,” which is also raising funds for a separate Origin Fund for three of Equal Origins’ partner organizations: a coffee organization and a cocoa organization in Colombia, and a coffee organization in Honduras. Each is a farmer organization that has built its own Gender Equity Development Plan through Equal Origins’ GEI process. In Honduras, for example, partner cooperative COPRANIL used that process to identify low female membership as a barrier and design its own steps to address it, including a policy encouraging members to transfer cooperative shares to their wives. Every dollar raised goes toward advancing plans like these, as defined by the organizations themselves. The goal: at least $15,000, a floor of roughly $5,000 for each of the three partners. Additionally, “Raise Your Cup” activation events will be hosted at coffee houses, cafés, roasting facilities, and coffee and cocoa business headquarters.

“All coffee is women’s coffee. All cocoa is women’s cocoa. Our work is to recognize the women whose labor has stayed invisible for too long — and to back that recognition with real investment in the plans they’ve built for themselves.”— Kimberly Easson, Founder & CEO, Equal Origins

WHY NOW

The United Nations has declared 2026 the International Year of the Woman Farmer (fao.org/woman-farmer-2026), a global spotlight on the women who sustain agrifood systems. And the stakes are real: closing gender gaps in agrifood systems could add nearly $1 trillion to the global economy and reduce food insecurity for 45 million people (FAO, The Status of Women in Agrifood Systems, 2023). The stories are here. The partnerships are here. October gives us the stage.

THE COMMITMENT

This campaign features coffee and cacao partners doing the work, not just wearing the message: every featured company demonstrates an active gender-equity development effort with its farmer groups. And every story is stewarded with care — gathered with permission, reviewed for accuracy, and shared back with the women and communities it honors.

“The women who grow the coffee we buy are central to its quality, yet they’re too often left out of the investment that follows it. Raise Your Cup is a direct way to close that gap — and a smart one for any company that depends on a resilient supply chain.”— Kelly Amoroso, Board Member, Equal Origins; Senior Coffee & Tea Buyer, Allegro Coffee Company

SPONSORS

The global coffee and cocoa industries and allies have stood up to support this campaign. The 2026 ‘Raise Your Cup’ sponsors to date include: Café Moto, Guittard Chocolate Company, The Coffee Quality Institute, Rich’s Foundation, Neumann Gruppe USA, Peet’s Coffee, Allegro Coffee, Westrock Coffee, Ascension Coffee, Stumptown Coffee, CORUS, Inspire Brands, Bent Barn Studio, T. Cross Branding + Consulting, and ECOM.

More information is available at equalorigins.org/raiseyourcup

ABOUT EQUAL ORIGINS

Equal Origins is a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that helps the coffee and cocoa industry close a persistent gap in its supply chains: women do the majority of the labor but see a fraction of the investment, training, and decision-making power. For over a decade, Equal Origins has built the tools the industry uses to fix that, most notably the Gender Equity Index (GEI), a diagnostic that helps companies and cooperatives assess their programs, meet due diligence and HREDD expectations, and target investment where it will actually reach women. Equal Origins works with private companies, NGOs, and public-sector partners toward a shared goal: reaching 5 million women farmers by 2030. Learn more at equalorigins.org.

Recognize, Uplift, Invest in the women who farm the coffee and cocoa we all depend on.

A Kindred Sparks campaign · Cultivated by Equal Origins · equalorigins.org/raiseyourcup · #RAISEYOURCUP