Happy New Year, Rumi friends! We hope you had a wonderful holiday season celebrating with family, friends, and neighbors. 2019 was an amazing year for our team and we cannot wait to see what 2020 has in store for us.
2019
For the past year, our team has been hard at work spreading the word about using spices as a force for good. In 2019 alone, our team witnessed an amazing amount of progress for the people of Afghanistan. This year, our team was able to employ and change the lives of a total of 3750 women in Afghanistan, most of whom are widows, and 335 Afghan farmers. We couldn’t do this without the continued loyalty and support of an amazing community like you.
Through your generous support, this year we were able to:
- Grow our workforce of women in Afghanistan by 64% from last year
- Increase our network of Afghan farmers by 16% from last year
- Pick 33,951,190 crocus flowers for the annual saffron harvest (that’s a 485 football fields worth of flowers!)
- Contribute over $1.4 million dollars to the Afghanistan economy since 2015
Rumi Spice Wild Harvested Black Cumin
That’s right, our team launched a new product this past year - Wild Harvested Black Cumin! Our black cumin is grown in the wild and is hand-picked by farmers and foragers in the Hindu Kush mountains of Afghanistan where they are carefully hand harvested by Afghan women and men in the Badakhshan province.
Earthy in flavor, our black cumin is nutty, slightly spicy, and warming in nature. Not only did we launch a wild black cumin, we also created a variety of unique cumin spice blends including: Ethiopian Berbere, Mexican Adobo, Southwest Chili, & Persian Gulf Baharat.
By harvesting a new crop, like black cumin, our team is able to work with a new network of women & men in Afghanistan. This gives us the ability to impact other areas of the country, ultimately allowing us to spread our mission across post-conflict countries like Afghanistan and further our social mission, all while providing Afghan women and men with competitive wages.
What’s Next for Rumi Spice in 2020
For the past four years, Rumi Spice has been laying the foundation for peace through agriculture. Although we are proud of this past year’s efforts, our progress will not stop here. For the New Year, we pledge to continue to build our team and give more opportunities to the people of Afghanistan while working to strengthen the country’s economy, all while delivering flavorful and quality spices to customers like yourself.
As we embark on a New Year together, we want to thank you for your constant support in our mission to empower Afghan farmers and women. We are so proud of all we have accomplished in 2019 and we could not have done it without the constant support and fierce loyalty of people like you. Thank you so much for being a part of the Rumi Spice community! We look forward to the year ahead in 2020 and cannot wait to see all we accomplish together and how many lives we can change in the year to come.
Have a happy New Year!