Women’s cooperatives are using tree planting as a model for economic success and community development. These cooperatives are creating financial independence, fostering community collaboration, and restoring degraded lands through sustainable tree farming. Plant With Purpose’s program, designed to help communities restore their lands and overcome poverty, has helped a number of these women’s cooperatives establish themselves in rural villages.
In many developing countries, women play a critical role in agriculture and natural resource management. However, they often face significant barriers to economic empowerment, including limited access to land, resources, and markets. Women’s cooperatives, where groups of women collaborate to achieve shared economic and social goals, have emerged as a powerful model for overcoming these challenges. Let’s explore how these cooperatives are creating financial independence, fostering community collaboration, and restoring degraded lands through sustainable tree farming.
Plant With Purpose partners with rural communities across the globe to restore degraded lands through a holistic model that connects agroforestry with accessible financial services. While we work with men and women, we have seen the emergence of women’s groups in a number of our programs. By empowering women through training, access to resources, and market linkages, we have witnessed remarkable success stories of economic empowerment and environmental restoration.
Women experience economic empowerment through reforestation
Tree planting offers diverse income streams for women’s cooperatives. These can include the sale of fruit, nuts, sustainable timber, and other resources from trees, as well as an increase in income from farm yields. Agroforestry, the integration of tree planting into farm cultivation, helps to boost farm productivity. This is how tree planting can enhance food security for participating households. Fruit trees provide nutritious food, while shade trees protect crops from intense sun and improve soil moisture.
Tree planting provides women with a valuable income-generating activity that can supplement or diversify existing livelihoods, such as subsistence farming or small-scale businesses. In some cases women can use material from the trees to help with an income-generating project.
Tree planting helps women experience community collaboration
Women’s cooperatives provide a platform for women to collectively address their challenges, make decisions, and advocate for their rights. Participation in cooperatives empowers women by developing their leadership skills, including decision-making, negotiation, and conflict resolution.
In Purpose Groups, women are often able to experience leadership opportunities for the first time. These groups provide a strong social support network for women, fostering a sense of community and shared responsibility.
The recurring presence of women in leadership can help challenge traditional gender roles.
Women’s cooperatives are effective platforms for promoting environmental restoration and sustainable land management
Women’s cooperatives play a vital role in reforesting degraded lands, combating deforestation, and improving soil health. With women playing a significant role in many ecosystems through their labor on farmlands, they can help to further ecological goals. These may include biodiversity protection, water conservation, or climate change mitigation.
Monica’s success with Plant With Purpose
Monica is a member of a Purpose Group co-operative with Plant With Purpose. Ever since joining, she has seen her income scale up drastically and she and her family have built a safety net of savings.
“Being in a Purpose Group has had positive effects on my personal development and that of my daughters,” she shares. “They have been able to advance in their studies.”
Monica notes that she and her husband have improved the quality of the plot of land they cultivate together. “We raise some animals and we are able to solve economic situations that were almost impossible before.”
“My community has improved a lot since we have been working together,” she shares. “All the members of the Purpose Group in this community have committed to applying the techniques that we have been taught. This continues to improve and increase production in the plots. It is easy to observe the change in the environment. There is more care for the natural resources, and we have a strong coexistence. We support each other, and that gives us the strength to progress as a community. I thank God for Plant With Purpose. I hope that in the future our children will follow this example of union so important that we are practicing now and that we continue to share the experience with others.
Women’s cooperatives in tree planting are demonstrating the power of collective action to achieve economic empowerment, environmental restoration, and community development. By addressing the unique needs and challenges of women, these cooperatives are creating a more equitable and sustainable future for their communities.
Cooperatives provide a platform for women to collectively address challenges and advocate for their rights, all while fostering a sense of community. Plant With Purpose’s work provides a valuable model for others who seek to support women-led initiatives in tree planting. By providing training and community support, Plant With Purpose has supported women to become agents of change, restoring degraded lands through reforestation, improving their livelihoods, and creating a more sustainable future for themselves and their communities.
“Before I had no control over anything, I did not participate in any community activities,” concludes Monica. “Now I have learned how to apply my personality. Joining the Purpose Group and participating in the weekly meetings awakened my abilities little by little. I now feel confident to express my ideas in the group. Now the people of the community have me as a leader.”
