CHIDO GOVERO AND THE KINGDOM OF MUSHROOMS

 

Chido Govero, never knew her father and witnessed her mother die from AIDS. At the age of seven she become the head of a small family nucleus, with her younger brother and blind grandmother. Her uncle and cousin abused her, “the price girls have to pay to have a shelter at a family’s plot of land”, she asserts is rather the rule than the exception.


At the age of 12 she learned how to farm mushrooms with a ZERI Foundation scholarship, converting leaves, dead tree branches, water hyacinth, coffee pulp and corncobs into a substrate. Chido is believed to have “green” fingers, farming more mushrooms on less substrate than anyone else. She is on a crusade under the ZERI program “Orphan Teaches Orphans” convinced that the only way girls can escape abuse is when they know how to provide for their own food security. By April 2009 Chido has trained her first dozen assistants and she is determined to reach out and network throughout Africa to create millions of jobs and to stamp hunger out of the continent with what is locally available.



"Equator Coffees" and Chido's Blend




The women-owned and managed wholesaler "Equator Coffees" listened to the story of Chido at the SCAA Award Ceremony in Atlanta: "How an orphan trains orphans converting pulp to protein". When Chido visited the team in San Rafael, California, the idea emerged to promote coffee from Africa, empowering more girls to learn how to achieve food security while promoting the export of a cash crop. And so "Chido's Blend" was created. For more information on how to buy this please click here


 

BOOK GUNTER PAULI FOR A CONFERENCE

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Coming soon Chido's Mushrooms "the urban farming initiative for jobs, healthy food and a happier planet"!!!

THE SPECIALTY COFFEE CHRONICLE


"Mushrooms and Coffee"

The ZERI Foundation’s innovative pulp-to-protein project receives SCaa’s 2009 Sustainability award, while the program benefits farmers’ livelihoods and the environment.  By Aaron Kiel 

Please read
HERE