Twin members

Raúl del Águila Hidalgo, General Manager of Cocla, sadly passed away on Wednesday 13^th February 2013.

Raúl was an inspirational leader of smallholder producers, not only in the Valle de La Convención, Cusco but also in the rest of Peru, Latin America and the world as a whole.

Twin’s work with coffee farmers in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo has been highlighted in a report carried in IRIN, Humanitarian News and Analysis.

The DRC coffee project was one of the first to get funding from the UK Government’s Food Retail Industry Challenge Fund (FRICH) set up by the Department for International Development to encourage the food industry to buy more from African producers.

With funding from DFiD‘s FRICH programme, Twin is working with a consortium of businesses to develop unique gourmet coffees from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and bring them to market through Sainsbury’s in the UK.

The DRC coffee will be produced by Twin member co-operative Sopacdi, an inspiring organisation working to rebuild coffee production in its corner of the war-scarred East Congo region.

Last week the Bududa District of Mount Elgon, Uganda, was hit by a landslide which engulfed three villages and killed an estimated 18 people (reported by both the Uganda Red Cross Society and Uganda’s daily newspaper New Vision).

This is the third such landslide in as many years. In March 2010, following extremely heavy rains, a devastating landslide killed over 300 people in the Bududa District and a further 35 people lost their lives in August 2011.