Fyffes and its subsidiary Sol Group, a melon producer in Honduras, have launched a gender equality program HERessentials to address the gender inequality prevalent in the country and especially in agriculture.
The fruit firm outlined that the gender equality program aims to train men and women working at Sol Honduras on gender and related issues such as health, home finances, interpersonal relationships and stress management.
The program is aligned to Fyffes sustainability target: '100% of Fyffes own sites in Latin America to benefit from Gender Equality Programs by 2025 and 50% of suppliers by 2030', which is aligned to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal for gender equality, it added.
Speaking about the launch in Honduras Michael Fletes, sustainability coordinator at Sol Honduras, explained, "Since its inception in Honduras 959 fieldworkers and pack-house workers have been trained on the HERessentials program, including seasonal workers, supervisors, managers and administrative employees.
Long-Standing Partnership
Fyffes highlighted that it has a long-standing partnership with Business for Social Responsibility (BSR) on their HERproject initiative and first began implementing a gender program in 2019 both in Honduras and Costa Rica.
Due to the pandemic, BSR developed a digital version of HERproject called HERessentials and Fyffes helped adapt that online version to the Latin American cultural context, using examples of gender issues faced the region.
Fyffes noted that it is making good progress against its target and has already rolled out the Heressentials tool via training apps on tablets in Costa Rica, Belize, Ecuador as well as Honduras, and soon to be launched also in Colombia.
"The experience has been enriching as we have brought technology closer to people, provided a safe space to address their work concerns including gender issues, and learned about the challenges faced by our people as well as the community needs," Fletes added.
"We have also established a Gender Committee to address gender-related concerns in the workplace.”
Read More: Fyffes Allocates European Donations To Support Charities Targeting Gender-Based Violence
© 2022 Checkout – your source for the latest Irish retail news. Article by Donna Ahern. For more fresh news, click here. Click sign up to subscribe to Checkout.
