PROGRAMS

Opening Markets in India

Gujarat, India: In partnership with the Self-Employed Women's Association, GFI is working with 27,000 woman farmers to improve access to markets and eliminate policy barriers facing small producers. ...»

Grinding Out the Middle Man

Photo provided by SEWA

In agricultural communities throughout the developing world middlemen prey on poor families, charging excessive fees to process, package and transport products for famers who lack the resources for the grinders, carts and packaging needed to get products to market. Ending this cycle of exploitation means giving poor farmers ownership of the process that products take from harvest to market. GFI is working with organic spice and seed farmers to introduce high capacity grinders into communities and remove the need for middleman processing and middleman fees.

One grinder can help a poor farmer increase their income by nearly a third, and in many cases by much more. By contributing to the GFI Grinders Project you can squeeze out the middleman and help break the poverty cycle in small-producer agricultural communities in India and throughout the globe where GFI works. To start grinding out the middleman click here and your contribution will be pooled with others to cover the cost of purchasing a grinder. ...buy a grinder »

The Life of Salt Worker in Northern India

Photo by Sally Painter

In the desert flats of Gujarat in northern India thousands of families earn their livelihoods extracting salt from the the arid land earning an income of just dollars a day per household. Numerous policy and economic barriers prevent salt farmers from increasing their wages and as a result social barriers have arisen that keep girls from achieving a basic education, families from accessing healthcare and that significantly deepen the poverty cycle for these marginalized workers. ...read more about the life of an Indian Salt Worker in the Washington Post Article 'This Is the Destiny of Girls' »

The Global Fairness Initiative, in partnership with the Self Employed Women's Association (SEWA,) is working to remove key input, market access and policy barriers to help Gujarat's salt workers earn a better livelihood and break the ongoing poverty cycle of this vulnerable community. Key opportunities that GFI has introduced include efficientcies in salt harvesting technology that are both enviornmentally sustainable and more cost effective for the salt worker families; improved processinging so that a better price can be garnered from a better product; mid-level financing products for communities of salt farmers to allow inventments in transportation, packaging...read more »