“Women’s entrepreneurship in the organic sector” (WEOS) project is a proper response to todays’ challenges.
The objective of the current project is to help women leading or working in organic companies, as well as women entrepreneurs, overcome the problems and challenges they face, exacerbated by the tragic circumstances of war, to support them with knowledge and tools, as well as to help them to promote their enterprises.
Earlier in 2024 the Gender Study of the Organic Sector in Ukraine was conducted aimed to examine the role of women in the organic sector of Ukraine, as well as the changes that are taking place, in particular, due to the full-scale war, to study the challenges for the sector, and possible ways to overcome them.
A common wartime challenge for the sector is the shortage of men and the related lack of technical specialists (who were traditionally men) — 76% and 62% of surveyed enterprises respectively declare such problems. In today’s reality, with men being mobilised to the army, women have to take over traditionally male activities, but this requires automation of production processes to replace hard physical labour.
The WEOS project will be focused on two components:
- Mentor and expert support for women in organic sector
- The Organic Grant Program for domestic market development
This project is being implemented by ICO «Information Center «Green Dossier» in partnership with Organic Initiative Public Association with a support of Switzerland.
The Organic Grant Program funded by Switzerland in the frames of project “Women Entrepreneurship in the Organic Sector” (WEOS) implemented by ICO «Information Center «Green Dossier» in partnership with Organic Initiative Public Association and Swiss-Ukrainian Program “Higher Value Added Trade from the Organic and Dairy Sector in Ukraine” (QFTP) implemented by the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture (FiBL, Switzerland) in partnership with SAFOSO AG (Switzerland).