Comic Relief also took an interest in Maraba. The 2001 Red Nose Day campaign had brought in £55 million for projects in the UK and Africa, some of which they pledged to the Association des Veuves du Genocide (AVEGA), an association of widows of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide.The charity discovered that many of the Maraba smallholders were also members of AVEGA and could thus provide funding and support. They contacted Union Coffee Roasters (UCR), a British roasting company, whose representatives visited Maraba in 2002 with officials from the Fairtrade Labelling Organisation (FLO). This group inspected the Maraba site and granted certification, making Maraba coffee the first Rwandan cooperative to gain Fairtrade status.UCR described the coffee as containing "sparkling citrus flavours complemented by deep, sweet chocolate notes" and bought all the remaining produce from the 2002 harvest.
UCR distributed its Maraba Coffee in early 2003 via Sainsbury's supermarkets,which sold the product in all 350 of its stores in the run up to that year's Red Nose Day.In 2003, the Abahuzamugambi Cooperative made US$35,000 in net profits. Of this, 70% was divided among the farmers at US$0.75 per kilogram provided, an amount more than three times that paid to other coffee growers in Rwanda and sufficient to pay for health care and education services which were not previously affordable.The remaining 30% was invested back into the cooperative and spent on buying calcium carbonate,an agricultural lime used to reduce acidity in the soil caused by run off of minerals during rainfall
