Fintrac’s dedication to smallholder farmers in developing countries extends to all members of the household. Our goal is to improve incomes, productivity and the quality of life for all our beneficiaries and their families. To advance progress toward gender equality in our programs, we focus on closing the gender gap in access to important resources so women can successfully manage their farms as businesses. Our gender integration approach focuses on five key building blocks for gender integration in agriculture. These building blocks address inequalities and constraints to women’s participation in agricultural value chains and promote women’s empowerment.

• By training women on good agricultural practices and business skills, we provide them with the foundational technical knowledge to implement changes that result in higher yields and incomes.
• We transfer low-cost, time-saving technologies that serve the dual purpose of cutting down on the time spent on labor-intensive tasks on the farm and in the home and efficiently improving crop yields.
• Fintrac links women with networks of input suppliers and financial service providers to unlock access to productive resources that are key to overcoming roadblocks in production and processing.
• Through our market-led approach to agriculture, our teams connect women with local, national and international vendors to sustainably increase sales and control their incomes.
• Finally, we promote women’s leadership opportunities by working with female leaders and encouraging group membership to develop confidence and the ability to make business and family decisions.

In addition to the building blocks, we also focus on initiatives we call “boosters” that address social and cultural norms and affect women’s ability to make decisions and control resources. These boosters include activities to achieve behavior change, promote good health and nutrition practices, and address gender-based violence in target communities. They ensure we are implementing an approach that involves the broader community, addresses the potential risks of promoting gender integration, and focuses on sustainable social change. As a company, our efforts in gender integration have made significant strides for communities around the world.

In FY 2016, Fintrac reached 589,888 female beneficiaries to improve lives in some of the world’s most vulnerable communities. These women improved their knowledge of good agricultural practices and 565,539 of them applied new technologies on their farms and in their homes that saved them time and energy on everyday tasks. They accessed $12.2 million in loans to invest in productive resources that led to improved yields and increased their incomes with $217.2 million in new sales. Fintrac’s female beneficiaries expanded their capacity for leadership with these successes and have positively contributed to the economic development and food security of their communities.