The Growing Resilience: Sustainable Livelihoods for Women Producers in the Black Pepper Value Chain project aims to empower women producers to participate and benefit from sustainable livelihoods in the black pepper value chain.

Background

McCormick Women’s Empowerment Framework (MWEF) is McCormick’s global impact-driven framework to enhance and track women’s empowerment across their agricultural supply chains. The MWEF compliments McCormick’s Purpose-Led Performance goals, which include increasing the “resilience of 90% of smallholder farmers that grow our key iconic herbs and spices, as measured by increasing skills and capacity, income, access to financial services, education, and nutrition and health.”

Over the past few years, McCormick has engaged CARE in different capacities in support of these goals. In November 2021, McCormick commissioned CARE to conduct an MWEF baseline assessment to explore women’s role in the black pepper value chain in Vietnam. The baseline assessment provided recommendations for intervention areas that are critical for women’s empowerment.

As of October 2022, McCormick is currently supporting 16 women’s clubs in Dak Lak and Dak Nong provinces with more than 500 members. With a view to continuing the support to the women’s clubs in a way that advances women’s empowerment in accordance with the MWEF, CARE is implementing a two-year project titled “Growing resilience: Sustainable livelihoods for women producers in the black pepper value chain”.

Objective of Sustainable Livelihoods for Women Producers

Empowering women producers to participate and benefit from sustainable livelihoods in the black pepper value chain. This will be attained through the following main outcomes:

  • Outcome 1: Women’s clubs strengthen their function as a community of interest among women producers in relation to McCormick’s supplier companies;
  • Outcome 2: Women producers have enhanced decision-making in the proper use of agricultural inputs; 
  • Outcome 3: Women producers have better access to extension services to improve production capacity.

Activities of Sustainable Livelihoods for Women Producers

  • Discussing with companies and women’s club leaders to agree on interventions, an overall plan, and how to engage club members in project activities
  • Equipping women (and their husbands) with knowledge and skills that they have interests in such as household finance management and market access; providing information and discussing safe and effective crop protection practices
  • Forming a core women’s group for agricultural extension, helping them promote their experience and skills in sustainable pepper production
  • Supporting women producers to pilot ideas of their own to help save time in production or post-harvest handling and improve product quality
  • Organizing gender discussions to address gender norms related to unpaid care work and gender-based violence
  • Documenting women’s role models in sustainable pepper production
  • Organizing community events to introduce the clubs to wider communities and honor the women pepper producers

Participants of Sustainable Livelihoods for Women Producers

Direct
16
women’s clubs

Indirect
2,000
people

Location

  • Buon Ho town, Dak Lak province
  • Dak Song and Dak R’lap Districts, Dak Nong province

Time

10/2023 – 11/2024

Donor