The MoU was signed by Mr. Joost Oorthuizen, Executive Director – IDH and Ms. Jyoti Macwan, Executive Secretary – SEWA.
The agreement lays down common vision and objectives of both organizations which include areas such as women empowerment; access to finance, education, marketing and health services for women farmers; and creating local employment and self-employment opportunities in rural areas.
Under the MoU, IDH will provide technical support and access to markets to women farmers associated with SEWA through its existing programs including Sustainable Spices Initiative – India (SSI-I) for Spices, Better Cotton Initiative (BCI) for Cotton and trustea for Tea. IDH will also enable access to finance for the smallholder women farmers and provide result measurement and learning framework to SEWA through its Service Delivery Model (SDM) analysis. Further, IDH will implement training to SEWA trainers on IDH Impact themes of gender equality, smallholder inclusion, deforestration, decent work and responsible agrochemical management, wherever applicable.
As a partner organization, SEWA will work towards promoting sustainability standards within the agricultural value chains in its network and increase awareness on value addition activities for improving market outreach. It will also work with IDH on strengthening the gender framework and share learnings from their projects for adaptation in different commodities sectors and geographies.