Specialty Coffee Wiki

International Women's Coffee Alliance

Properties3
descriptionA global non-profit network of self-governing national chapters, founded in 2003, that works to get women in coffee-producing and coffee-drinking countries into leadership, training and buyers' view.
tagsorganization, non-profit, gender-equity, membership-network, advocacy
aliasesIWCA, International Women's Coffee Alliance (IWCA), IWCA Global, Women in Coffee, Women's Coffee Alliance, organizations/international-womens-coffee-alliance

11 min read

International Women’s Coffee Alliance (IWCA)

The International Women’s Coffee Alliance (IWCA) is a non-profit network whose stated purpose is to “unite a global network of chapters and support the work and growth of women in the international coffee community.”12 Its vision is to “be the leader of empowerment and equity for all women in coffee,” and it names seven core values: respect, sustainability, equity, integrity, collaboration, empowerment and inclusion.2

The longer version of the mission it uses with partners is more concrete: to “empower women in the international coffee community to achieve meaningful and sustainable lives through access to resources, education, and market visibility.”3

Read that last phrase carefully, because it is the whole organisation in three words. Market visibility means being findable and buyable — a woman-run farm or mill that no importer has heard of is not competing on quality, it is invisible. IWCA does not grow, buy, roast or certify any coffee. It builds the introductions.

What it actually is: a federation, not a head office

The thing most often misunderstood about IWCA is that it is not one organisation with branch offices. It is a federation of independent, self-governing organisations called chapters, each of which sets its own strategic priorities.2 The global body’s job is to admit them, connect them and represent them.

To become a chapter, a group must complete IWCA’s nine-step Chapter Formation Protocol, which requires legal registration in its own country, democratic election of a board, and a strategic plan. Chapters must adopt the IWCA Code of Conduct and stay nonpartisan.2

That structure explains a lot of what you see in the field. When you read about “IWCA Costa Rica,” you are reading about a legally separate Costa Rican non-profit that publishes its own regional guides and runs its own projects — see Tarrazú, where the chapter’s regional page is a working reference on the region.4 Chapter output varies enormously in scale and polish for exactly this reason: the network sets the entry bar, not the ceiling.

Where the chapters are

IWCA’s chapter directory lists chapters in four groupings — Africa & the Middle East, Asia & Oceania, Latin America & Caribbean, and consuming countries.5

RegionChapters listed
Africa & the Middle EastBurundi, Cameroon, DR Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique (in formation), Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, Yemen
Asia & OceaniaIndia, Indonesia, Myanmar, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Vietnam
Latin America & CaribbeanArgentina (in formation), Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama (in formation), Peru, Venezuela
Consuming countriesAustralia, BeNeLux, Canada, China (in formation), France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Spain, USA

The directory page describes the network as chapters “in 40 countries,” with four more in formation.5

Two things stand out. First, a third of the chapters are in countries that drink coffee rather than grow it. That is deliberate: a Canadian or German chapter is a room full of the people who write purchase orders, and connecting them to a Rwandan or Peruvian chapter is the point of the whole network. Second, the map covers origins that specialty buyers rarely reach — Yemen, Myanmar, Mozambique, Venezuela — which is a reminder that this is an industry-wide body, not a specialty-only one.

To verify — 35 chapters or 40?

IWCA’s own pages do not agree with each other. The chapter directory says “40 countries” with four more in formation, and lists 44 entries in total.5 The “What We Do” page says the network spans “35 chapters”, and the partnership page says “35+ coffee-producing and -consuming countries”.23 No page carries a date stamp, so the likeliest explanation is that 35 is a stale figure left on older pages while the directory is current — but that is an inference, not something IWCA states. If you need a number, count the directory. IWCA publishes no total individual-membership figure anywhere consulted here.

Programmes

IWCA’s global site names five programme lines:1

  • Women in Coffee Access & Training Grant Fund — grants for access and training
  • Chapter Grant Fund — grants applied for by chapters
  • Coffee Availability List (C.A.L.) — the market-visibility tool: a list of coffees available from women producers, aimed at buyers
  • Chapter Projects — locally designed and run
  • Families In Coffee

The Coffee Availability List is the one worth understanding, because it is the mechanism behind “market visibility.” It is a catalogue that puts women-produced lots in front of the people doing green coffee buying — solving the discovery problem rather than the quality problem. It sits in the same part of the supply chain as an importer’s offer list, but is organised around who grew the coffee instead of who imports it.

Beyond programmes, IWCA describes its method as leadership development, strategic partnership and amplified market visibility, aimed at the underrepresentation of women in leadership roles.2

To verify — no published outcomes

No grant amounts, recipient names, project results, or number of coffees listed on the Coffee Availability List were found on any page consulted. The programme names above are confirmed; their scale is not.1 IWCA’s most recent published financials show total revenue of US232,389 and expenses of US218,893,6 which is a very small central budget for a 40-country network — consistent with a federation whose real activity happens inside independently funded chapters, but the split is not documented. Do not repeat an impact figure for IWCA without an official report behind it.

Founding

IWCA was founded in 2003. Its own account credits six co-founders — Karen Cebreros, Colleen Crosby, Kimberly Easson, Karen Gordon, Melissa Pugash and Margaret Swallow — and describes the movement as beginning with women from Costa Rica, Nicaragua and the United States, who gathered at the Specialty Coffee Association of America’s headquarters in Long Beach, California.7

The SCAA detail matters for placing IWCA in time. The SCAA was the American half of what became the Specialty Coffee Association after its 2017 merger with the European body, and 2003 puts IWCA’s founding squarely in the third wave period, when relationship-based buying was replacing anonymous commodity sourcing — the moment when who grew this first became a question buyers asked out loud.

To verify — the founder list

Widely circulated secondary write-ups name only two founders, Karen Cebreros and Kimberly Easson. The six-name list above comes from IWCA’s own About page and no other source consulted.7 The two-name version and the six-name version are not necessarily in conflict — the shorter list may name the initiators of a larger founding group — but no source consulted explains the difference, and IWCA publishes no dated founding document, incorporation record or minutes. Treat the individual attributions as IWCA’s own account of itself.

IWCA is a registered 501(c)(3) tax-exempt non-profit in the United States.8 US federal filings list it as International Women’s Coffee Alliance Inc, EIN 721598424, with a registered address in Springfield, Illinois, an IRS ruling date of July 2006, and an activity classification under scholarships and student financial aid.6

That ruling date is worth a beat. The organisation dates itself from 2003, but the IRS recognised its exempt status in 2006 — a three-year gap that is entirely ordinary (an organisation exists before it files, and filings take time), and not a contradiction. Two different clocks, not two different founding dates.

IWCA’s Executive Director is Blanca Castro, who is listed as the contact for chapter-formation enquiries.7

To verify — the board

No board roster could be read. IWCA’s global team page publishes its board and staff as image files (“2026 Board”, “IWCA Staff 2026-Jan”) with no accompanying text, so no director names, titles or countries are recoverable from the page.9 The Executive Director’s name above comes from a passing mention on a different page, not from a staff directory.7 Any IWCA board list you encounter elsewhere should be traced to a filing or a dated press release.

Who it works with

IWCA’s partner and supporter pages name a long list of industry, research and multilateral bodies, including the African Fine Coffees Association, the International Coffee Organization, the National Coffee Association, the Specialty Coffee Association, the Coffee Quality Institute, World Coffee Research, the World Coffee Alliance, the International Labour Organization, the International Trade Centre, UN Women, Embrapa, Solidaridad, Sustainable Harvest, Rotary International, Food Enterprise Solutions, and roasters including Caribou Coffee, Caffè Vergnano, Higher Ground and Earth’s Choice Organic Coffee.3

The shape of that list tells you where IWCA sits. It is not a certification scheme and not a buyer — it is the connective body that shows up in the same rooms as the trade associations, the training institutes and the UN agencies. The presence of the International Labour Organization alongside roasters is the giveaway: IWCA’s brief spans both the labour-conditions conversation (see Ngäbe-Buglé coffee labour for what that looks like on the ground) and the commercial one.

The SCAE entry

The partner list still names the Specialty Coffee Association of Europe, which merged into the Specialty Coffee Association in 2017.3 Like Square Mile’s membership list, that is a sign the page has not been fully refreshed rather than evidence of a live relationship.

Why it matters

It is the main organised answer to a structural fact about coffee. Women do a very large share of the field and mill work in producing countries and hold a much smaller share of the land titles, cooperative board seats and export contracts. IWCA’s response is not a label on a bag; it is chapters, boards, training and a buyer-facing list.

Chapter independence is both its strength and its ceiling. Because chapters are legally separate and self-funded, the network can grow into 40 countries on a central budget of roughly a fifth of a million dollars.6 For the same reason there is no single standard of what an IWCA chapter delivers, and no consolidated impact reporting.

It is a visibility mechanism, not a premium. Unlike Cup of Excellence or Best of Panama, IWCA runs no competition and awards no score — so an IWCA connection is not a quality claim and should never be read as one. It is a route to the table. Whether the coffee is good is still settled at the cupping table.

Footnotes

  1. International Women’s Coffee Alliance — homepage (official) — confirmed via WebFetch; source of the mission statement, the five-region chapter grouping, and the programme names (Women in Coffee Access & Training Grant Fund, Coffee Availability List, Chapter Grant Fund, Chapter Projects, Families In Coffee) ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  2. International Women’s Coffee Alliance — What We Do (official) — confirmed via WebFetch; source of the vision statement, the seven core values, the nine-step Chapter Formation Protocol with legal registration and democratic board elections, the Code of Conduct and nonpartisan requirement, the leadership/partnership/market-visibility method, and the “35 chapters” figure ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6

  3. International Women’s Coffee Alliance — Partnership (official) — confirmed via WebFetch; source of the expanded mission statement, the “35+ coffee-producing and -consuming countries” figure, and the full partner and supporter list including the Specialty Coffee Association of Europe entry ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  4. IWCA Costa Rica — Tarrazú — a national chapter’s own regional page, already used as a source on Tarrazú; cited here as an example of independent chapter output ↩

  5. International Women’s Coffee Alliance — Chapters (official) — confirmed via WebFetch; source of the full chapter directory by region, the “in 40 countries” description, and the four chapters marked in formation ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  6. ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer — International Women’s Coffee Alliance Inc (IRS Form 990 data) — confirmed via WebFetch; source of EIN 721598424, the Springfield, Illinois registered address, the July 2006 IRS ruling year, the scholarships/student-financial-aid activity classification, and the US232,389 revenue and US218,893 expenses figures ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  7. International Women’s Coffee Alliance — About (official) — confirmed via WebFetch; source of the 2003 founding, the six named co-founders, the Costa Rica/Nicaragua/United States origin of the movement, the SCAA Long Beach founding meeting, and Blanca Castro as Executive Director ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  8. International Women’s Coffee Alliance — Profile (official) — confirmed via WebFetch; source of the “nonprofit 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization” description ↩

  9. International Women’s Coffee Alliance — Global Team (official) — read via WebFetch; board and staff are published as image files with no text roster, so no names or titles could be extracted ↩

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