In honor of Women's Month, ISPN launches a booklet of experiences and results on projects supported by the PPP-ECOS Fund led by women from indigenous peoples, traditional peoples and communities, and family farmers in the Legal Amazon.
“Projects are powerful tools for challenging gender inequalities,” comments Juliana Napolitano, technical advisor at ISPN and one of the organizers of the publication. "Sowing seeds for the future and reaping lessons learned through socio-environmental projects developed by women."This is the first publication with a gender focus in which ISPN had the opportunity to deepen its understanding of the characteristics, results, and impacts of PPP-ECOS projects, supported with resources from the Amazon Fund, on the lives of women and their communities.
The publication also features the collaboration of ISPN's technical advisor, Isabella Ferreira, and authorship by gender studies specialist Ariane Favareto, in addition to review and contributions from other women on the Institute's technical team, such as the indigenous journalist Andreza Baré.
By delving deeper into the characteristics and particularities of the challenges faced by women in rural and forested areas, this study opens a door for the experiences reported to inspire other projects and initiatives that consider female empowerment as a driver for the development of economic initiatives that conserve biodiversity and value traditional knowledge of land use and management.
In total, 23 projects located in the Legal Amazon region, in the states of Tocantins, Maranhão, and Mato Grosso, were studied. They portray, for example, experiences in processing socio-biodiversity products, such as babassu, pequi, and mangaba, which allow greater autonomy for women in production, generating income and more independence in their daily and family lives.
In addition to the study, ISPN held a workshop in May 2023 to develop the report, bringing together women's projects supported by the PPP-ECOS Fund through the organization's Amazon and Cerrado/Caatinga Programs. This event provided further opportunities for discussion, exchange of experiences, and learning for the study, as well as being a moment of support and inspiration for Indigenous women, quilombola women, family farmers, and many other representatives of traditional peoples and communities supported by PPP-ECOS.
“For ISPN, conducting the study and a workshop focused on these initiatives was a milestone, as it points to ways to increase and improve our funding for women's projects. The result of this process showed that women's ventures generate results that go far beyond those expected, since, by enabling women to come together and build their community plans, they also allow them to chart their paths to greater autonomy and protagonism in the pursuit of recognition and public policies,” highlighted Napolitano.
“Sowing futures and reaping learnings together with socio-environmental projects developed by women” received support from the Amazon Fund and may be downloaded here.