The Program Built to Give Coffee Talent a Real Shot
The first edition of Youth Academy Middle East officially came to an end last week.
If you haven't heard of it, here's the short version. It's an initiative by the Simonelli Group, announced a year ago, built specifically for young people who want to build a real career in coffee. Six scholarships. Fully paid. Covering SCA-certified courses across Barista Skills, Sensory, Green Coffee, Roasting, and Brewing.
How the Program Works
Applicants between 18 and 30 years old fill out an online application, answer a set of questions, and if the Simonelli Group team feels they're the right fit, they get called in for a face-to-face interview.
The six who make it through get the full Specialty Coffee Association Skills Program handed to them. They are grouped together and trained by SCA certified trainers based in the UAE, some of the classes taking place at the Victoria Arduino Experience Lab.
The SCA Coffee Skills Program is made up of five specialist modules, each one focused on a different professional role in the coffee industry. The students in Youth Academy Middle East covered all of them.
Barista Skills is where it starts for most people. It covers the essential practical skills behind the espresso bar, from setting your grinder and pulling espresso to foaming milk, latte art, health and safety, customer service, and basic business practices.
Brewing goes deeper into the science of what's in the cup. From grind size to water temperature to brew time, it covers hands-on education for grind profiles, different brewing methods, measuring coffee strength, and charting extraction.
Sensory Skills is about training your palate to actually trust itself. Students learn to identify core coffee taste attributes and master professional cupping techniques. Perfect to set up and lead coffee tasting programs.
Green Coffee takes you back to before the roast. This module covers how to evaluate green coffee quality, understand coffee processing and grading, and get familiar with the basics of coffee market dynamics. It's the side of coffee most consumers never think about, but it shapes everything in the cup.
Roasting is where the craft gets technical. Students learn to control roast profiles and colour, operate roasting equipment, and manage production roasting workflows. Understanding what heat does to a bean, and when to stop, is a skill that takes years to develop properly.
Each module runs across three progressive levels: Foundation, Intermediate, and Professional. The Youth Academy students worked through the Foundation level across all six, giving them a structured base to build on for the rest of their careers.
Meet the Six
What made this edition special wasn’t just the program. It was the people in it.
Hnin Kha Nady is someone who clearly wants to keep growing. She recently joined Archers and came into this program with a simple goal: to create more memorable coffee experiences for the people around her. The skills she picked up here are going straight to work.
Mark Mwangi is well known in the community, probably best recognised for his exceptional matcha drinks. He is the lead consultant behind Mihbash in Jumeirah, one of the more successful café openings in recent memory, and you can already see him channelling what he learned here into mentoring his own staff.
Amritha Varsha left engineering behind to follow something she felt more strongly about. She found her place at Cartel Coffee Roasters and has been quietly building her presence in the community, most recently competing in the Polpanorte AeroPress competition. She’s someone who keeps showing up.
You might look at Mohamed Alameeri, founder and head roaster of Palate Coffee Roastery and the first Emirati AeroPress Champion, and wonder why he’s sitting in a foundation course. That’s exactly the point. Learning never stops, and he knows it better than most.
Brenzen Labarete needs little introduction. Senior Barista, Brand Ambassador for Davinci Gourmet Arabia, and Middle East Barista of the Year 2023. He didn’t join this program to add another line to his CV. He came for the depth, and that says a lot about where he wants to take his craft.
Donna Santianez has a dream a lot of us in this community share, to one day open her own shop. She’s not waiting for the right moment though. She’s building towards it, one course at a time. Six different stories. One shared vision to be the best in their craft.
The Trainers
The lineup behind this program was seriously impressive.
Antonio Orria, Simonelli's very own Coffee and Beverages Community Expert, led some of the foundation classes in this program, giving students a grounding in the broader world of specialty coffee before diving into the specialist modules.
Raha Shahsavar, UAE National Roasting Champion 2025, handled green coffee and roasting. Two modules that go hand in hand. Students got to understand what happens to a bean before it ever reaches the roaster, how it's processed, graded, and evaluated for quality, and then what happens once heat is applied, how roast profiles are built, how color is controlled, and how production workflows are managed.
Dave Peralta, co-founder of Archers and head of its Coffee Academy, taught SCA Brewing Foundation. Students worked through the variables that define what ends up in the cup, grind size, water temperature, brew time, extraction, and how to measure and adjust coffee strength across different brewing methods.
Irina Sharipova, a coffee educator with over a decade of experience, led the sensory module. This is where students learn to stop guessing and start tasting with intention. Identifying flavour attributes, understanding mouthfeel, running cuppings, and building the kind of sensory vocabulary that makes you useful in any part of the coffee chain.
Branislav Beronja, Brand and Training Manager for Cafes Richard, took the students through barista skills. From grinder basics and espresso profiling to milk handling, machine maintenance, customer service, and workflow management. Everything you need to hold your own behind a bar and then some.
These individuals are at the top of their game in the UAE specialty coffee scene and are looked up to as mentors when it comes to their own journey in this industry.
What Comes Next
With the first edition done, Simonelli Group is already working on the next one. No dates confirmed yet, but if you're between 18 and 30 and you've been thinking about taking your coffee knowledge seriously, this is worth keeping an eye on.
The application will open again. When it does, don't sleep on it.
