Grameen Foundation wins funding to address needs of local farmers

GRAMEEN Foundation USA has won a $1-million funding meant to address the problems of coconut and cocoa farmers in the Philippines.

The Global Resilience Partnership—convened by The Rockefeller Foundation, United States Agency for International Development, and Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida)—named Grameen particularly for a project that intends to promote disaster resilience among coconut and cocoa farmers in the Philippines.

Grameen is one of eight teams that will receive $1 million each in funding for projects that will help enable vulnerable populations become resilient in the face of life-disrupting phenomena such as natural disasters.

‘Global Resilience Challenge’

The Washington D.C.-based nonprofit organization competed against almost 500 other aspirants in the multistage Global Resilience Challenge. The prize money will be used for implementing solutions that can be scaled and adopted by others in the future.

“Coconut farmers are among the poorest in the agriculture sector in the Philippines, and with recent hard-hitting typhoons, their challenges keep increasing and livelihoods are being destroyed,” Grameen Foundation country director for the Philippines Gigi Gatti said in a statement.

Gatti noted that 32 percent of Filipinos are directly employed in agriculture, particularly in rural areas.

Helping farmers

“Grameen Foundation and its team will help farmers to improve productivity, access financial services, expand access to markets, and use early warning systems to reduce crop losses,” she said.

“Working with government, agribusiness and financial services partners, the team will leverage mobile technology to provide coconut farmers with real-time data and services to help strengthen their businesses and mitigate losses to their families due to extreme weather,” she added.

For its project, Grameen Foundation is partnering with Nutiva, the Philippine Coconut Authority, Franklin Baker, Planet Labs, Stichting Progreso and Filipino microfinance institutions, food corporations, as well as agronomists.

According to Judith Rodin, president of The Rockefeller Foundation, the eight winners of the Global Resilience Challenge show “how we can create multiple wins for individuals and communities when problems are clearly understood and when solutions respond not only [to] today’s realities, but build [on] flexibility to manage tomorrow’s unknowns.”

The other seven winning teams are implementing projects for vulnerable communities in Bangladesh, India, Kenya, Mali, Nepal, Niger and Uganda.

Interconnected challenges

“These teams are looking at interconnected challenges—from water conservation to food security to climate change—and identifying holistic solutions that bring societies together to prepare for and overcome disruptions,” Sida director general Charlotte Petri Gornitzka said.

“By combining multiple sector resources and expertise with local knowledge and engagement, the ideas directly address the challenges and realities people are facing,” she said.