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Whether it's an illness, drought, flood, or accident, shocks happen. And while shocks are gender-neutral, the impacts are not.

Grameen Foundation partners with local organizations to make sure people, especially women, living in poverty can anticipate, adapt to, and rebound from shocks and stressors. When women can save profits from their business or proactively adapt their farms to global warming, they can make sure their families stay food secure and healthy.

Grameen Foundation's theory of change: Focus on the resilience outcome
A woman smiles as she slices a coconut in half. A pile of coconuts, and a male farmer, are in the background.
150 million people would no longer go hungry if women farmers had access to the same resources as men.

Program Spotlight: The Sustainable Coconut Project

Coconut oil, produced from copra, is found in most confectionery products. Currently, coconut production is unable to keep up with global demand. While farm cooperatives work to support coconut farmers, their effectiveness is compromised by low adoption of digital tools, lack of financial and operational resources, and failure to include female farmers. Grameen Foundation, in partnership with Barry Callebaut, aims to improve 25,000 smallholder farmers’ copra production and incomes and connect them to markets, while ensuring positive social and environmental impacts.

Learn more  

32% increase in food security

Participants in Grameen Foundation's Rajasthan nutrition program reported substantial increases in food security for themselves and their children.

86%

Of farmers who participated in Grameen's FarmLink program learned how to mitigate the risk of drought and pests. They received text alerts on weather and recommended actions to take to protect their coconut farms.

More than twice as many farmers

Invested in diversified income activities, such as buying livestock, to better withstand shocks after participating in our resilience program in Burkina Faso. In addition, participants felt their households were more resilient as a result of working with Grameen—at a rate nearly double the comparison group.

Edna Bacquiano’s Story
150 million people would no longer go hungry if women farmers had access to the same resources as men.

Story of Change: Edna

Before joining our digital farming initiative, Edna was shut out of the formal market economy. She is one of 3.5 million smallholder farmers who grow nearly 80% of the country’s coconuts yet don’t have access to early warning systems, advanced agricultural techniques, financial services or market buyers. As a result, they are very poor. Most live on just over $1 a day.

But with the help of our donors and our amazing partners, we changed the story for Edna and 2,873 at-risk coconut farmers with a simple app designed for basic-feature phones, showing them exactly how to avoid catastrophe.

I was grateful for the text reminders [on avoiding pests and saving profits] because when I needed money for my children's schooling, I had money to spend.  
— Edna, coconut farmer in the Philippines

Her Outcomes: Resilience

Where We Work India

Research Finding: Grameen Foundation Project Improved Nutrition in India

Grameen participated in the Rajasthan Nutrition Project, a program that built on existing women's self-help groups in India. Over the course of the intervention, we found that the project led to changes in dietary habits, indicators of gender equality and female autonomy, increases in breastfeeding, and decreases in food insecurity for children and mothers.

Learn more about the findings  
Tanzania Farmer

Innovative Tools for Smallholder Farmers across Africa and Asia

Smallholder farmers deal with challenges of low productivity and low incomes caused by climate change and poor access to information on the latest and best farming practices. This challenge is heightened for sustainable agricultural approaches that often have to be locally adapted and are usually more knowledge-intensive than conventional approaches.

Innovative digital tools and approaches provide smallholder farmers with an opportunity to develop pathways to improve their access to support services and knowledge on best practices to increase their productivity, income, sustainability and ultimately resilience to climate change.

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Mandeepa, a farmer in Uttar Pradesh

The Invisible Women in India’s Farmer Producer Organizations

In a remote Uttar Pradesh village, Roshni anxiously awaits the monthly meetings of the Dharavats – a farmer producer organization in her area. The farm worker joined the FPO about six months ago and is already spreading her wings. “It not only provides me an opportunity to meet my fellow farmers, but also to learn about new farming techniques, markets and government schemes,” she says.

Data suggest that only 15% of the total members of FPOs in the state are women, another barrier for women in agriculture.

Grameen Foundation India is working on strengthening women’s participation across 40 farmer producer organizations through its MANDI project in eastern Uttar Pradesh.

Learn more about MANDI  
Help women living in poverty withstand climate change and other shocks
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