Did you know that 1% of every order you place with Foria goes towards a nonprofit of your choosing? One of those organizations is Women’s Earth Alliance, a nonprofit organization that catalyzes women-led, grassroots solutions to protect our environment and strengthen communities from the inside out.
In honor of Women’s History Month, we sat down with Jen Palmer, Special Initiatives Lead at Women’s Earth Alliance, to learn more about the work that Women’s Earth Alliance is pioneering and how Foria helps support that mission.
Prefer to listen? Watch the full interview on our YouTube channel here.
Can you share the origin story of the Women's Earth Alliance? What inspired your creation? And what's your core mission?
Our origin story is really special and near and dear to our hearts. It was born back in 2006 — 18 years ago. We're looking at our 20th anniversary coming on the horizon, but it was a collective of about 30 different women from 26 countries. They all gathered together in Mexico City with this beautiful shared vision to build an alliance that would put an end to environmental and gender-based violence. These leaders came together and started sharing strategies to conserve threatened ecosystems, transform health systems, launch sustainable micro businesses, protect indigenous sovereignty, land rights, reduce toxic pollution and ensure clean water access for communities. Very beautiful and big visionaries came together to set an intention to support the women and the women leaders all around the world, especially women working on the front lines of the climate crisis.
As these women worked together, they developed this set of guiding principles. They were very clear about identifying key challenges and strategies, and also mapped out these regional hubs and started looking at their very first project. This original vision just grew and grew through the incredible leadership of our co-founders, Melinda Kramer and Amira Diamond. Our worldwide alliance continues to design and implement these incredible initiatives that are really focused on protecting the earth, protecting ecosystems, and promoting safe and equitable conditions for women and girls. Our big vision is to ensure a just and thriving world. We have our impact report that's about to come out next week, which shows all of our amazing successes last year. Here we are nearly two decades later, and we've now catalyzed the efforts of over 52,000 women.
There's this vital piece of your mission, which is centered around this idea that when women thrive, the earth thrives. And there's so much research to support this. Can you elaborate on some of those principles and why that matters?
This is the intrinsic thread that ties all of our work together. It’s sort of this multiplier effect. If we work with local women leaders, they build other leaders. So we might start with one woman and that will then become 10, and those 10 leaders will then become 100, and then a thousand and then more and more and more. That intrinsic community and ripple effect is the theory of change. By providing long-term investment and support to not just the leaders, but the communities, we're able to ensure that they really can deepen and scale the impact of their own solutions. We don't go into communities and [say], “this is what you should do.” These are their solutions to their communities, barriers and challenges. With these resources, we not only are able to scale their own initiatives, but we can also help them teach others in their community and keep that ripple effect going and helping the earth thrive. We really do believe that when women thrive, the earth thrives.
I would love to know more about some of these key global issues that Women's Earth Alliance focuses on and some of the initiatives you're doing to empower the women in the communities that you support?
I'll just share a little bit more of the depth and complexity behind those issues, starting with food security. Women produce most of the world's food, yet they own less than 10% of titled land. For example, in Southeast Asia, women farmers might have crops that yield 20% or even 40% lower than those farmed by men because they lack access to seeds, best practices, technologies, or the markets. If women had the same access to those resources, their farm production in developing countries could increase by 30%. With that ability to feed 100 million people, they've reduced world hunger. These are facts. These aren't this esoteric idea that women are great for the environment. These are real numbers that have to do with massive global challenges that we face and the fact that women have the ability to bring solutions to the table that are truly profound. In addressing hunger, it's really phenomenal.
And water access, like you mentioned. Women spend about 200 million hours a day collecting water. Often it's really unsafe to drink. A lot of the younger women aren't able to go to school and get an education because they have responsibilities to collect water. Part of what we do as an organization is we help empower women to design and lead their own water projects and being able to turn this traditional cultural practice on its head so that more people — especially more women — are able to feel resourced and have that ability.
Women also make up 80% of climate refugees. Women are about 14 times more likely to die in a climate related disaster than men. No matter where you are in the world, the climate crisis is here. It's here, it's today, it's happening, it's affecting all of us. Women are experiencing greater health challenges, economic, and social challenges from this. We can equip women with skills and resources so that they are able to lead this climate adaptation and the mitigation efforts in their communities. And to your point, health and safety is a truly profound issue that I think we need to be talking a lot more about. We try to help address these disproportionate health burdens that women are facing from environmental toxins, increased violence in areas, especially areas that are going through environmental destruction. There's a tremendous amount of violence that's affecting the communities. We really want to be able to help promote safer and healthier communities. Working with these women leaders is a great solution and step forward to be able to do that.
Someone who hasn't done the research your organization has might not correlate environmental destruction with domestic or sexual violence. They might not know that lack of access to water and food also correlates to lack of access to education and empowerment in communities. You're connecting dots to really show that it's all interconnected. And so we really have to look at the whole picture.
I was just about to say, that's exactly it. And that starts from the womb, right? So as you're carrying a child, if you're living in an environment where there's so much scarcity, whether that's food or water on top of domestic violence — your baby, while she's in the womb, is sensing that and feeling that and taking that in, and that's laying the foundation of the entire path forward. So, resourcing basic needs — safety is a basic need, food and water are basic needs. And so these are really intrinsic pieces of the solution moving forward, especially when you're talking about your children.
Can you share a few stories of a community that you've worked with that has really transformed because of Women Earth Alliance's support?
There are so many. I feel like we could chat for hours just about our stories. We have a YouTube channel where there are beautiful videos that share stories about our leaders and our programs. We don't have time to go into all of it today, but if you're having a bad day and you need to feel hope in the world, go to our YouTube channel because you will be so inspired.
One that I really want to share with you comes from Nigeria and it's this force of nature woman, Olanike. She was actually a founding member of Women's Earth Alliance and she took part in that co-design of what is this going to look like way back in 2006. About two years later she participated in our first-ever women in water training program in Kenya. From there, she launched her own nonprofit and this nonprofit is still running today. It's called Women's Initiative for Sustainable Environment or WISE — perfect acronym. They're dedicated to improving health and protecting the environment, supporting women to promote and sell these clean cook stoves in their environment. So, really focusing on the health of the women that are in the huts and cooking, what are they breathing in? She's really invested in the health of women in her communities and now she's our program lead for all of Nigeria.
The collaboration between WEA and WISE, which is her nonprofit, is ongoing and it's had this really transformative impact in Sub-Saharan Africa. They have distributed over 60,000 clean cook stoves across Nigeria. And she's been working with almost 2,000 eco-entrepreneurs and advocates. These are women that are really, really poised to take their place and become the drivers of the whole clean energy movement in Nigeria. And then our whole East Africa program is learning from them. So you might do a pilot study or a pilot project in one region, but that issue is a common issue that's tied to so many other countries and other regions. Clean cook stoves are not unique to Nigeria. This is an issue all across East Africa. Same with water, same with reforestation. We're always learning from them and we're learning together. She's just a rock star I wanted to shed a light on.
One of the ways that Foria gets to support your work is through 1% of our sales at checkout being donated to a cause of the customer’s choice, and one of the options being Women's Earth Alliance. I'm curious, how does this type of support or partnership allow you to achieve your mission? How important is that kind of funding for you?
It's so vital. I am lucky that I get to hold the relationship piece of all of the business partners that we work with. Partnering with brands like Foria, it plays a really critical role. It's critical in helping us achieve our mission. These collaborations provide us with financial resources that are needed to support these grassroots women leaders. And as we said, these women really are creating these lasting community-driven solutions in the face of pressing environmental challenges. Without your support, we're not able to help resource them.
But what I think makes partnership particularly meaningful is not just about the funds. Obviously, the funds are vital. They're essential, but it's also about our shared values. It's about our collective commitment to sustainability and to women's health. The more that we are able to engage in these partnerships, we're able to raise that level of awareness, especially around the intersection of gender equality, climate justice, environmental stewardship. You have this beautiful platform and an audience that we don't have access to, but you do. So these types of collaborations allow us to amplify those voices and shine a light on the work and the stories that are happening with these women. We are really thankful.
I'm really glad to hear that. It makes our whole team proud to know that as we do our work that supports women's sexual health, we also get to support organizations like yours and all of the other organizations and communities you're connected to in your truly vital missions to support and change the world. What are some simple ways that our audience can support your mission? How can they get involved?
First and foremost, we do have this 20th anniversary campaign coming up that we just launched. It's called Rising Tides Rising Women. We have a vision of accelerating this initiative to support maybe 15,000 women leaders to protect our planet and end the climate crisis. So any kind of support for that initiative and that campaign is tremendously valuable at this time as we look upon the horizon of our 20th anniversary. Secondly, just sharing the word, having conversations like this, talking about women-led climate solutions with your family, with your friends, following us on social media platforms and sharing that out there. You can always purchase something from one of our partners like Foria. We have many funding partners that are all listed on our website that give back to us. So supporting them helps support us.
And then I would say, start becoming curious and participate in your own local community. Look around and see what calls to you because everyone is different and there's lots of different ways for each individual to become part of this movement and part of the solution. And it can happen in small day-to-day ways. It could happen in a big grand global way, and everything in between. Pay attention to what you're called to, what is your heart speaking to you? Is it a particular issue? Maybe you're really fired up about plastic pollution and you want to tackle that, or maybe it's a region that you really love. Maybe you went to Bali one time and it just made your heart soar and you want to get more involved. I mean, we have over a hundred women leaders all across Indonesia, right? So I think there's lots of ways to help and be part of our community.
I don't remember who I heard this from, but I know for a fact that the research shows one of the best ways to get out of depression, to get out of anxiety, is real acts of service that remind you that you're part of the world at large.
Exactly. I gave a talk five years ago, and one of the things I shared was very personal: That sometimes it's not about where you're at in your journey, but where you can be in someone else's. And I really believe that sometimes when you're stuck in your head or you feel stuck in your life or you've done too much doom scrolling and you feel like the world is falling. Take a moment to pause and say, “Okay, there might be a lot going on in here, but I have the ability to step into and support another person.” And it might be as simple as smiling at someone at the coffee shop. It might be looking at something locally that you can get involved with. It might be diving into a global initiative like what we have. That connection piece, that's the medicine.
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