Celebrating Mozambican Women's Day

Today marks a special day for us at Our Gorongosa — National Women’s Day in Mozambique. All we do would not be possible without the hard work and dedication of the inspiring women we work with on the ground in Gorongosa National Park. At the heart of our operations are the many women farmers who plant your favorite coffee on Mount Gorongosa. Read on to hear three of their stories!

Vaida Faranguene

Vaida has been working with Gorongosa National Park for close to seven years, first as a volunteer in the rainforest reforestation initiative and today as a coffee farmer. When we started the Gorongosa Coffee Project, Vaida was hired to run the coffee and native tree nursery at the top of Mount Gorongosa's waterfall. She works there five days a week and is responsible for over 200,000 coffee seedlings!

Querida Barquinha

Querida also started as a reforestation volunteer. Before the coffee project began, she — like many farmers — relied on subsistence farming of maize, beans, and sorghum and would sell the surplus for additional income. Now, she earns a monthly salary as a coffee farmer and an annual income from the sale of her coffee and other crops. She is using that money to send her two children to high school.

Floriana Randinho

Floriana was born in Nhanguco village in the district of Gorongosa and started planting coffee in 2018. She has seven children — five boys and two girls. Three of them go to primary school in Nhanguco and the other four are now adults living in marriages.⁠ ⁠She tells us she dreams to work hard to build a good house and live a better life. She even saves a certain amount of money every month to buy building materials.