A Good Coffee Culture

From the coffee beans to the café, Dr Robbie Francis is helping to improve the lives of disabled people in Mexico and New Zealand.

- Monique McKenzie

Now that I have seen, I am responsible.” These lyrics from Kiwi singer Brooke Fraser’s song Albertine helped inspire disability advocate Robbie Francis as she was building her sustainable-coffee charity, The Lucy Foundation.

Born with phocomelia syndrome, which results in underdeveloped limbs, Robbie learnt to walk on an artificial leg. But, because she couldn’t say “prosthesis” or “artificial limb” as a little girl, it was fondly known as “Lucy Leg”. It was an easy choice for the name of her foundation, which she created after interning for a disabilityrights organisation in Mexico City in 2013, while studying for her master’s degree in peace and conflict studies at the University of Otago. While there, she went undercover into institutions for people with disabilities to document the humanrights abuses that were taking place and was appalled by what she saw. “I’ve worked in places of extreme poverty, but this was cruel, inhumane and just horrific.”

EMBRACING HER IDENTITY