Promoting gender integration for business productivity 

The Gender team on a factory visit to Novarea’s processing facility 

Prosper Cashew has developed a gender action plan that details specific activities to support women and youth inclusion.

Gender is an important cross-cutting activity for Prosper Cashew. In 2022, Prosper Cashew finalized its Gender and Youth Social Inclusion (GEYSI) study. Additional information on this study can be found here. Following the findings from the study, Prosper Cashew developed a detailed gender and youth action plan. The plan details specific activities the project will implement to address identified gaps for women and youth. One of the recommended activities is to support partner processors to be more gender-responsive in business practices. To achieve this objective, Prosper Cashew began piloting and adapting the Gender-Responsive Diagnostic (GRD) tool for one of our partner processors, Novarea, in Côte d’Ivoire.

The GRD tool is helping Novarea identify and prioritize business practices they can adopt to help them achieve their commercial goals and advance women’s economic empowerment. Additionally, Prosper Cashew is developing an action plan in collaboration with Novarea that includes practical steps to be taken to adopt a prioritized set of gender-responsive business practices and track progress toward their goals. Eventually, Prosper Cashew will extend the use of this tool to other processes in 2023, following the pilot with Novarea.

Prosper Cashew team at Novarea’s processing factory