Dumerso

The Dumerso washing station sits near the town of Yirgacheffe and is managed by sisters Hirut and Mahder Birhanu. Originally built in the late 1990s, it was revived in 2013 to serve local smallholders who depend almost entirely on coffee for their livelihoods. Around 750 farmers deliver cherries from small plots averaging 2 hectares, where coffee grows under the shade of Wanza, Birbirra, and Acacia trees. Dumerso now produces both washed and natural coffees and has also developed an initiative to repurpose coffee parchment into pressed firewood — reducing local deforestation and improving sustainability in the region.