When we say we are multi-lingual in coffee, we really mean it! The latest item in our repertoire came from two weeks in Peru for Managing Director Carolyn Evans and Principal Consultant Tanya van der Wall, on the road for one of our not-for-profit clients.
Putting their bodies on the line for the team, they went up hills (some of them dusty in the coastal desert of Lima) and down valleys (at least one sacred, on the way to Machu Picchu) to visit and learn about projects run to assist women in Peru.
Along the way, they also studied SMEs in urban, rural and remote settings, looked into microeconomic influences on market places (captured in a bottled water price index!), got involved in a protest march about water rights, saw a demonstration project intended to make women in remote communities more self-sufficient in food production, visited the leading university business school in Lima, compared women’s employment in tourism, service industries, local government and micro-businesses, and did we mention they climbed Machu Picchu?
Ask us about our coffee ratings! The local brew is cafe pasado – which our top favourite bakery in Cuzco made using the best organic coffee beans, toasted weekly with their house secret ingredients (orange peels, onion skins and the right amount of sugar) with the result an aromatic, smoky, sweet coffee essence that they said “makes us dream awake”.