Fyffes Launches Gender Equality Program on its Farms in Honduras

Fyffes and its subsidiary Sol Group, a melon producer in Honduras, have launched the gender equality program HERessentials to address the gender inequality prevalent in the country and especially in agriculture.

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 part of Fyffes efforts to reach its 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.

Fyffes has a long-standing partnership with Business for Social Responsibility (BSR) and its gender initiative called HERproject with which the first Fyffes gender equality program was implemented in 2019 in Honduras and Costa Rica. Due to the pandemic, BSR developed a digital version of HERproject called HERessentials to facilitate the implementation of the training, and Fyffes helped adapt the content to the Latin American cultural context using examples of gender issues faced in the region. To date, Fyffes has implemented HERessentials through tablets in Costa Rica, Belize, Ecuador, and Honduras, and it will soon be launched in Colombia as well. Thanks to this digital training tool, Fyffes is making good progress toward its sustainability target.

Speaking about the launch of HERessentials in Honduras, Michael Fletes, Sustainability Coordinator at Sol Honduras, explains: “Since its implementation, 959 fieldworkers and packhouse workers have been trained on gender equality, including seasonal workers, supervisors, managers, and administrative employees. 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.  We have also established a Gender Committee to address gender-related concerns in the workplace.”