Women's Economic Empowerment

"The best thing that happened to me was to join this program."

Surviving time in a refugee camp, but then losing her husband to malaria, Athanasie and her family returned to Rwanda to farm coffee. As a single parent, she was worried about how she would survive. With the training she received from TechnoServe, Athanasie worked hard to create a healthy and prosperous future for her family – one coffee tree at a time.

This Women's History Month, we highlight our work promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment throughout the coffee value chain.

After struggling to make ends meet on her tomato farm, Cicily partnered with TechnoServe to start growing the more resilient Kilele tomato and implement best farming practices, allowing her to increase profits and open her own store.

Aditi Madan went from a TechnoServe business training program to becoming the first woman entrepreneur on Shark Tank India. Here, this food business visionary shares her journey to national success after overcoming challenges and learning how to “unlearn” what she thought she knew.

The women TechnoServe works with around the world represent thousands of inspirational stories. To mark International Women’s Day, we asked some of them about the challenges they face, their hopes for the future, and their advice to the next generation of women.

Meet Dara Obispo, a 19-year-old single mother living in Peru’s Amazon basin. With tailored agronomy and financial literacy training, she has increased her cocoa production seven-fold — and gained a new outlook on life.

Ruth Nabatanzi couldn’t afford to stay in school, and struggled to make ends meet. After a TechnoServe training, she launched a career as a welder, an unusual occupation for women in her country. Now she is earning significantly more income – and breaking gender stereotypes.

Even though she would rather be cooking delicious meals, a chef in Mozambique works to revamp the business side of things to keep the food flowing out of her kitchen.

Women play a central, though often "invisible," role in Colombian coffee production. Here's how The Coca-Cola Foundation and TechnoServe are partnering to improve the access of 11,000 women to the services and training they need to run their coffee farms as a business.