Fyffes and its subsidiary Sol Group, a melon producer in Honduras, have launched a gender equality program called 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 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.

Fyffes 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 says 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.

Speaking about today’s launch in Honduras Michael Fletes, Sustainability Coordinator at Sol Honduras, explains: "Since its inception in Honduras 959 fieldworkers and packhouse workers have been trained on the HERessentials program, 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.”