Category: GCC

Episode 7: Coffee with A Purpose

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Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka meets with local farmers who produce the beans for Gorilla Conservation Coffee in Uganda. Photo courtesy of Gorilla Conservation Coffee.

Coffee is not only consumed and beloved around the world, but it is also produced in many countries ranging from Costa Rica and Indonesia to Uganda, Brazil and Laos. Though coffee agriculture has not always been equitable for the farmers, there are innovators changing that. In this episode, we talk with two entrepreneurs who have found a way to make coffee into a sustainable and sustaining industry by creating fair-trade projects that not only provide producers with living wages, but also support local conservation and community development efforts.

Kathryn met our first guest, Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka, on a trip to Uganda in 2019. Not only is she the first Wildlife Officer of the Ugandan Wildlife Authority, but she is also the founder of an NGO called Conservation Through Public Health that works with communities living around Bwindi Impenetrable Forest to promote gorilla conservation efforts there. She and her husband, Lawrence, founded Gorilla Conservation Coffee to help farmers living around the park support themselves by growing and selling coffee at fair prices.

Among other projects, folks at Saffron Coffee in Laos cultivate coffee plants in a nursery to give to regional farmers as they get started. Photo courtesy of Saffron Coffee.

Next, Eric calls Todd Moore, the director of Saffron Coffee. Along with a lovely little cafe in Luang Prabang, Laos, Saffron Coffee was founded in 2006 to help farmers in the hill villages of northern Laos shift from growing opium to farming coffee. Today, they work with more than 800 farmers in 25 of these villages. That success didn’t come without challenges, though, which we learn during our conversation.

Follow Gorilla Conservation Coffee on Instagram @gorillaconservation_coffee, and Saffron Coffee @saffroncoffee. And as always, be sure to check out our own Instagram feed @conscioustravlerpod.

Interview with National Geographic Explorer and Conservationist, Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka

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Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka is a National Geographic Explorer and multi-award-winning conservationist who has been a life-long champion of wildlife. As an African woman growing up in a male-dominated society, she found the determination and courage to overcome the many obstacles she faced due to her gender to become Uganda’s first wildlife vet.

Not one to rest on her laurels, after leaving the Ugandan Wildlife Authority, she followed her heart and founded her NGO, Conservation Through Public Health, and the social enterprise, Gorilla Conservation Coffee to preserve the endangered mountain gorillas, create health and prosperity for the local human community and be a caretaker for our planet.

 

Describe a typical day for you?

I don’t have a typical day. As founder and CEO of a small but growing 17-year-old grassroots NGO, Conservation Through Public Health (CTPH), based in Uganda, that works to ensure that the mountain gorillas are healthy and their habitats are secure, I have a long to-do list and wake up each day to prioritize it. I also wear several hats as a leader where I sit on a number of boards including, The Gorilla Organization based in the UK, and committees including the Women for Environment – an Africa leadership council advocating for greater female leadership in conservation.

My husband, Lawrence Zikusoka is a co-founder of our two main initiatives, Conservation Through Public Health (CTPH) and our social enterprise, Gorilla Conservation Coffee.  We often start the day by comparing notes on what we plan to do.

The best part of my job is spending time at our field office in Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, home to just under half of the world’s endangered mountain gorillas. A typical day involves getting up earlier than usual to check on the gorillas, and other days involve hosting and attending meetings with field staff and community volunteers including Village Health Teams, Gorilla Guardians and Reformed Poachers who encourage their community to protect the gorillas, and who we support along with the rest of the local community with improved healthcare and livelihoods so that they can coexist with the gorillas and other wildlife. I am also a mother to two energetic sons, aged 16 and 11 who travel with me to the national parks as often as possible, where we spend amazing quality time together.

When I am at CTPH headquarters in Entebbe, I often spend my day responding to emails about day-to-day operations and new enquires, thanking our donors and supporters through email and social media, writing or reviewing grants, reviewing and sending reports to donors, the government and other stakeholders on the work we have done, reviewing and designing new projects and mentoring and inspiring my team in their work.

Prior to COVID-19, I spent 25% of my time travelling around the world presenting and raising funds for our work. Lately, I have been invited to sit on a number of virtual meetings, giving several presentations because our One Health approach is helping to reduce the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on endangered mountain gorillas at Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, as well as other great apes in Africa via advocating for responsible tourism.

One highlight has been finding our first UK distributor for our Gorilla Conservation Coffee, Moneyrow Beans who have made it possible for us to continue to support local coffee farmers in the absence of an income from gorilla trekking tourists during the pandemic. This has helped to reduce their need to enter the gorilla habitat for food and firewood at a time when bushmeat poaching has greatly increased all over Africa. We have also had to begin a new program of providing emergency food relief for vulnerable communities around the park, which became more urgent when one of the gorillas was killed by a hungry and desperate poacher.

 

What do you feel are your greatest achievements?

One of my greatest achievements has been establishing an award-winning NGO that is positively impacting some of the poorest people sharing a habitat with gorillas and other wildlife, and contributing to the growth of the mountain gorilla population from 600 when I first started working with them, to 1063.

One of our first awards was the 2009 Whitley Gold Award for outstanding leadership in grassroots nature conservation which was presented to me by HRH Princess Anne. I was also greatly honored to become a finalist for the Tusk Award for Conservation in Africa in 2019, where we were hosted by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge at Kensington Palace which caused a lot excitement among friends, colleagues and family in Uganda. This year, our charity Conservation Through Public Health won the prestigious 2020 Saint Andrews Prize for the Environment, an achievement we are very proud of.

Our social enterprise, Gorilla Conservation Coffee, also won the 2017 United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Switch Africa Green SEED Award for eco-inclusive enterprises, and second prize at the 2019 Italian StartUpAfrica Road Trip Award.

In August, I was honored to receive the 2020 Aldo Leopold Award from the American Society of Mammologists, and truly humbled to be the first African to receive it and the second woman.

 

What’s in your handbag/satchel?

Lip balm, fragrance and hand cream from the Body Shop where I have been shopping since 1990. I was drawn to this business because they do not test on animals and now also support women and sustainable businesses globally. I also carry a phone, sunglasses, contact lens solution and glasses (I am very short-sighted), a notebook, pens of different colors and at least one reading book. Other essential items since the COVID-19 pandemic began, include hand sanitizer and a range of cloth masks made by local women from a local enterprise, Ride for A Woman enabling them to earn an income to support their families sharing a habitat with the gorillas in the absence of tourism.

 

What are your ambitions in life?

I would like to expand our impact to other countries in Africa where gorillas are found and other parts of Uganda where gorillas are not found, working with local stakeholders. Something else I feel strongly about is to help increase the number of women leaders in conservation through my role on the leadership council of Women for the Environment – Africa, and leaders of color in conservation in my role as the Vice President of the African Primatological Society that is building African leadership in primate research and conservation.

I am currently writing a book about my experiences in conservation and leadership journey with gorillas and other wildlife over the past 30 years, which I hope to get published next year. It’s something I have been wanting to do for many years and excited that it is finally happening. I have found a great literary agent, Naz Ahsun, who is very supportive.

 

What do you wish you’d known at the start of your career you now know?

It is important to choose a career based on something you truly care about because when the going gets tough, what keeps you going is your passion and purpose. I have found that you will never be able to please everyone all of the time, especially if you want to make a difference and change the world. When you work alone you go fast, when you work with others you go far; I have learnt the importance of teamwork, having a motivated team, and building partnerships with external stakeholders. As a founder of an NGO and social enterprise, I have also learnt to place values ahead of talent when hiring people. On a personal note, I have learnt how important it is to be an authentic leader, and strive to develop a healthy work/life balance.

 

Where do you see yourself in 5 years’ time?

I see myself stepping down from being the CEO of our NGO and social enterprise and devoting more of my time on the Board, spending more time growing as a leader and mentoring my team, and others in my sector. I also see myself spending more time advocating for our approach to a wider audience in Africa and the rest of the world. I am humbled to be a finalist of the 2020 Tällberg Eliasson Global Leadership Prize because of our One Health approach to Conservation.

 

What advice would you give a budding Vet?

Veterinary training enables you to impact many sectors if you would like to take up these amazing opportunities. It has been a truly interesting and rewarding journey for me to be able to make a difference in conservation, public health, tourism, and agriculture sectors through my training as a veterinarian.

 

What advice would you give to a new parent?

Enjoy parenthood, don’t try to be a perfect parent, spend as much time as possible with your children because they change so fast during the first few years and two decades of their life, and you don’t want to miss many of those moments in helping to shape their values. My eldest son recognised his first elephant at the age of two, in the national park, not in a storybook. Let them follow their passion and be who they want to be and encourage them to be authentic, build their leadership qualities, and fulfill their potential in life. I am truly indebted to my mother, who on top of being a hands-on mother and grandmother, encouraged me to follow my dream to pursue a career with animals because she realised that from an early age, I hated to see them suffering, and even when being a Vet in Uganda was not a profession that paid well, and I am truly indebted to her for that.

 

Finally, happiness is…

Being true to yourself and leaving the world better than you found it….

 

www.ctph.org

www.gccoffee.org

www.moneyrowbeans.com

www.pangols.com

Buy Gorilla Conservation Coffee anywhere in Uganda on Simbi Mall

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500g Kanyonyi Coffee - Medium Roasted Ground Coffee
Single origin, 100% Arabica coffee from farmers living around Bwindi. Photo: Gorilla Conservation Coffee

PRESS RELEASE

Entebbe, Uganda

29 October 2020

Gorilla Conservation Coffee has partnered with Simbi Mall, an online eCommerce platform that allows you to buy our single origin, 100% Arabica coffee, that supports smallholder farmers around Uganda’s Bwindi Impenetrable National Park and conserves endangered mountain gorillas.

Click here to order 125g, 250g and 500g Kanyonyi coffee medium roasted (ground and beans) for delivery in Kampala and across Uganda on Simbi Mall.

Started in 2015, Gorilla Conservation Coffee is a social enterprise of award-winning Conservation Through Public Health NGO founded by world-renowned wildlife veterinarian and mountain gorilla expert, Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka.

Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka has this to say about the collaboration: “We are thrilled to announce this new partnership with Simbi Mall which brings Gorilla Conservation Coffee even closer to our customers in Uganda so that even more people can enjoy our sustainable coffee, while saving gorillas one sip at a time”.

Simbi Mall Co-founder and Chief Sustainability Officer, Ms. Christine Ainabyona, echoed her sentiments: “More and more customers want to use their phones to order groceries and use contactless payments, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. We set up Simbi Mall to meet this need, and to provide exceptional service while doing so. It is a privilege and honour to get Gorilla Conservation Coffee online with Simbi Mall as it not only bolsters our beverages selection but also ensures that we are supporting the sustainable development of the Bwindi region”.

Now you too can do your bit to protect the gorillas and support communities around Bwindi. With Simbi Mall, you can now purchase the award-winning Gorilla Conservation Coffee Kanyonyi brand coffee online – from the comfort of your own home or office – and have it delivered to your doorstep.

For inquiries, please email: info@gorillaconservationcoffee.org or call +256777171421.

For inquiries, please email: simbi@simbimall.com or call +256788650135.

#SavingGorillasOneSipAtATime #SustainCoffee #ConserveGorillas #GorillaConservationCoffeeXSimbiMall

Gorilla Conservation Coffee (Sustainable Coffee Challenge)

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Gorilla Conservation Coffee supports farmers living next to gorilla habitats through paying a premium and training farmers in sustainable coffee farming and processing, which helps to protect the critically endangered gorillas. Proceeds from every bag sold support gorilla conservation and community health NGO programs of Conservation Through Public Health, www.ctph.org

STATEMENT OF SUPPORT

“Gorilla Conservation Coffee was started in 2015 to create a sustainable source of income for coffee farmers living around habitats where critically endangered gorillas are found to reduce their dependence on the forest to meet basic needs for food and fuel wood. Teaming up with other organizations in the Sustainable Coffee Challenge will help us achieve a balanced planet.” Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka, Founder, Gorilla Conservation Coffee.

Our Commitments

Support 500 farmers around Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, with training in sustainable agricultural practices that conserve soil and water, agroforestry, and give the farmers above market prices for premium or specialty coffee that will be sold to tourists, and lifestyle and health and sustainability [LOHAS] consumers in Uganda and internationally while building a global coffee brand that is saving gorillas one sip at a time. Among the coffee farmers include reformed poachers, women and youth and men; where we are reducing their dependence on the mountain gorillas’ habitat to meet their basic needs for food and fuel wood. A donation from every coffee bag sold will go to support Conservation Through Public Health’s community health gorilla health and conservation education programs in the same communities.

UN SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS

The Ugandan Vet Saving Gorillas & Empowering Communities

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Local veternarian, Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka in Uganda © | JMcArthur/Unbound Project

At the Gorilla Conservation Café in Entebbe, Uganda, I order a latte while I wait for Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka. It’s not just any coffee in my cup, and as the name of the locale implies, this is not just any coffee shop. Both the café and the coffee are part of Kalema-Zikusoka’s collection of social enterprises that support her non-profit organization, Conservation Through Public Health (CTPH).

Kalema-Zikusoka, known to most as Dr. Gladys, is a pioneering wildlife veterinarian who has dedicated her career to saving the endangered mountain gorilla. She does so by improving the lives of the people who live on the edges of the gorillas’ habitat in the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest. Kalema-Zikusoka’s unique approach to conservation embraces the inherent difficulties of motivating a community to reserve concern for animals when they, themselves, are struggling.

Kalema-Zikusoka arrives wearing a black T-shirt featuring the Gorilla Conservation Coffee logo and the slogan: “Saving gorillas, one sip at a time.” She’s become a savvy businesswoman—she earned her MBA with a focus on social entrepreneurship in 2016, and she’s often photographed in shirts that highlight her initiatives.

Kalema-Zikusoka tells me she’s been interested in helping animals since she set up a wildlife club in her Kampala high school some 30 years ago. She attended the University of London’s Royal Veterinary College in the early 1990s, where about half of her classmates were women. When she returned to Uganda at age 25, she was hired as the first female veterinary officer for the country’s national parks. But when she spoke to local veterinary classes, she realized all the students were men.

“When I first started working with wild gorillas, there were no female rangers—hardly any women at all,” she explains. “Now, about a third of the rangers, trackers, and wardens are women. There are more vets as well, but there is a long way to go.”

At around the same time that Kalema-Zikusoka was studying in London, the Uganda Wildlife Service was beginning to recognize the tourism potential of its large primates—mountain gorillas and chimpanzees. Uganda, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo are the only three countries with wild mountain gorilla populations, and none live in captivity. There are just over 1,000 mountain gorillas left in the world, and about 60 percent of them remain in Bwindi.

There are just over 1,000 wild gorillas left in the world © | Christina Newberry

Conflict between humans and gorillas has always existed on the edges of Bwindi. Gorillas come out of the forest to feed in the banana plantations, destroying the farmers’ livelihood. The animals pick up human diseases from dirty clothing on scarecrows. When the farmers are struggling, they enter the forest to hunt and gather wood for fuel, disturbing the gorillas’ habitat and creating more opportunities for disease transmission.

Kalema-Zikusoka identified human scabies as a fatal problem for the gorilla community during her early research in 1996. She realized that in order to improve gorilla health, she had to improve human health. When communities are healthy and thriving, there’s far less risk of disease spreading between the two species, which share 98.4 percent of the same DNA.

As a vet, Kalema-Zikusoka had the most health education of anyone in the organization, which had become the Uganda Wildlife Authority by the early 2000s. She created CTPH to provide sanitation and family-planning options for locals, who, at that time, had an average of 10 children per family.

“Family planning fit in very well with our mission in Bwindi,” Kalema-Zikusoka elaborates. “Only 20 percent of women were using modern family planning methods. Now we’re up to 60 percent. We present it as a way of balancing the family budget, so even the men in the household become interested. The women are happier. They feel liberated. It’s good for maternal health not to have babies every year.”

Dr. Gladys with Gorilla Conservation Coffee lead farmers, Vincent and Sam Karibwende © | JMcArthur/Unbound Project

At the same time, Kalema-Zikusoka helped create a cooperative of about 75 coffee farmers, which provides production, training, and marketing support to brand their Gorilla Conservation Coffee as a premium product, and pay them a living wage. They earn 50 cents per kilo above market price for their beans, which are processed in Kampala, and $1.50 from every bag sold directly supports the work of CTPH. Participating farmers also offer a coffee safari program that teaches tourists who have come to Bwindi for gorilla trekking about how coffee is produced, and how the social enterprise supports community and gorilla welfare.

Bags of beans are for sale in the café as well as 60 other locations, including the duty-free shop at Entebbe International Airport. CTPH distributes trademarked Gorilla Conservation Coffee in the European Union, Switzerland, and the United States, where the beans are available from Pangols, a wildlife and sustainability-focused e-commerce site. Each bag of Arabica beans features the image of Kanyonyi, a silverback from Bwindi. His image also looms large in the café.

Dr. Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka founded Gorilla Conservation Coffee, which both supports the local community and saves gorillas © | Christina Newberry

Through her work, Kalema-Zikusoka has strengthened the bond between gorillas and the people who live alongside them, improving the health of both parties along the way. In October 2018, she received a Sierra Club Award for her “Unique contribution to international environmental protection and conservation.”

In November 2018, mountain gorillas were removed from the critically endangered species list, though they are still endangered. The World Wildlife Fund cited “Community engagement, prevention of disease transmission and law enforcement” as key factors in the gorilla population rebound. “Gorillas are so similar to us,” Kalema-Zikusoka adds. “We want people to feel inspired to protect them forever.”

This story originally appeared in the 4th issue of Unearth Women magazine, now available for purchase in our online store.