When it comes to producing exceptional coffee, it truly takes a village. Women are a tremendously influential part of the global coffee community, making up 70% of the labor in field work and harvesting—detail-oriented roles which ultimately translate to excellence in the cup. However, women face steep challenges when it comes to equitable access to career growth, land, education, and credit, representing just 20-30% of farm ownership. The Village is a celebration of women in coffee, composed of seasonally-rotating selections from valued relationships with female producers and cooperatives, aimed at highlighting and addressing this gender gap. According to strong research, investing in women increases the sustainability of coffee everywhere—women are more likely to reinvest their income back into their families, their coffee businesses, and their communities. And when access to decision-making and the global marketplace improves for women farmers, quality improves too. Currently, The Village features a small group of founding members of the International Women’s Coffee Alliance (IWCA) chapter in Burundi. At first sip, the coffee presents the honeyed, ripe, stone-fruit sweetness typical of excellent, clean coffees from East Africa. But the hard work of the women of Turihamwe is increasingly apparent as the cup cools: complex and delicate flavors such as melon, orange blossom, rosewater, and vanilla unfurl and lengthen in the aftertaste. JNP Coffee’s founder, Jeanine, didn’t jump right into coffee—she originally started a nonprofit called Burundi Friends International, whose focus was on youth development and eradicating poverty. It was through this non-profit work that she met the president of the International Women’s Coffee Alliance (IWCA) chapter in Burundi, and they began to collaborate. The IWCA was founded in 2003 by a group of women in Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and the US who decided to come together as a group to change the coffee industry for the better by focusing on female empowerment and connection. The organized group of female producers in Burundi at the time they met Jeanine was small but still growing, and sought to bring together the female workforce—a group that makes up about 70% of all labor in coffee in the country. However, most female producers aren’t landowners or in a position to contribute to their family’s economic growth, like being able to open a bank account. Their first project with JNP wasn’t, in fact, to import coffee, it was to provide female producers with goats. Diversification of income in this joint effort was profoundly successful, and it led to many future projects focused on economic empowerment and financial literacy—and, of course, trading coffee was interwoven through all of it. As a product that features seasonally rotating coffees from valued relationships with female producers, we hoped to reflect the diversity of stories and perspectives as well as origins in the label artwork. To do so, we had the privilege of working with the incredible Costa Rica-based illustrator, Erica Zeledón Salazar to bring the concept to life. We were drawn to her use of vibrant colors and texture, as well as how she uses symbolic elements to connect her ideas to the natural world.