Our Work
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Program Information
Program Supporter: The Boris and Inara Teterev Foundation
Implementing Partners: APALCOF, ANAG
The Challenge and the Opportunity
Farming communities throughout Guinea-Bissau have historically been victims of an entrenched, and often institutional, process of economic marginalization. The Guinea-Bissau Livelihood Initiative aims to break the current poverty cycle affecting smallholder producers and improve livelihoods through support of government priorities on economic growth and poverty reduction with a focus on agricultural production, market access and regulatory improvements for the farming sector. GBLI will target crop diversification for food security by providing technical assistance on producing high value crops like tomatoes, onions and particularly rice, which is a priority for the national development agenda of Guinea Bissau. The program’s core goals are to provide technical assistance, infrastructure investments, access to financing and technology, and direct market linkages for small-holder farmers. The market access strategy will also focus on opportunities to improve the conditions for processing, pricing and trading of cashews, and other high value products. The underlying objectives are to economically empower poor producers (primarily women), to extract great value from their products and facilitate a more enabling regulatory and commercial environment for smallholder producers throughout the Guinea-Bissau.
Partners and Stakeholders
GBLI is working with a community of approximately 5,000 women and men employed in agricultural production. The program will engage stakeholders in Guinea-Bissau’s agriculture sector through four key interventions: technical assistance and capacity building, producer investment and market linkages, policy engagement, and enterprise leadership development. In order to address the root causes of poverty GBLI will target the interrelated barriers that contribute to the fundamental breakdowns in Guinea-Bissau’s agricultural economy. By leveraging GFI’s expertise in livelihood development and market access to maximize the capacity of local agricultural cooperatives and producer groups, the GBLI program aims to remove the barriers to economic opportunity for small producers in one of the world’s poorest and most isolated nations.
Program Leadership Team
Haua Embaló
Country Director, Guinea-Bissau
Haua Embaló is a manager in the socioeconomic field of study with expertise in project management, strategic planning, institutional development and microfinance development. With over 11 years of experience in community development, Embaló’s career includes the design and implementation of poverty reduction programs to generate income for local producers and youth organizations in craftwork, rice production and the cashew sector in Guinea Bissau. Prior to joining GFI, Haua worked for 10 years with SNV (a Dutch organization working in community development in Guinea-Bissau) as an adviser and project manager. In addition to her work as a project manager, she also worked as an independent consultant on numerous projects and programs in Guinea-Bissau. Haua began working as GFI Country Director for Guinea-Bissau in January 2016.
Jean Marsault Ella
Deputy Country Director, Guinea-Bissau
Jean Marsault is originally from Cameroon, where he did his entire nursery, primary, secondary and university studies. He is a graduate, as a Field Engineer in Telecommunication, from the National Polytechnic Bamenda, Cameroon. He later on went for further studies in the Republic of South Africa where he studied community development at the Kwazulu Natal Experimental College in Pinetown, Durban and graduated as a Development Instructor. As a pre-requisite for completion of community development studies, he did a successful six-month internship with Humana People to People in South Africa, an international NGO. Prior to joining GFI, Jean Marsault worked with a number of organizations, including ADPP in Guinea-Bissau, an international organization member of the International Federation of the Humana People to People, where he held the position of Partnership Officer; APALCOF, a major small holder farmers’ association in Guinea-Bissau, where he held the position of Program Manager; and, has been an independent consultant with the Guinea-Bissau National Civil Society Movement. He is versed in the English, French and Portuguese languages. In September 2014, Ella began working on the Guinea-Bissau Livelihood Initiative –GFI’s program in Guinea-Bissau – and he’s hoping to create a significant impact on the local populations’ livelihood.
Infamara Mane
Program Officer, Guinea-Bissau
Infamara Mane is natural born Bissau Guinean and he completed his primary, secondary, and higher education in The Republic of the Gambia at Malfa Primary school, Nusrat High school, and The National School of Forestry. He returned to Guinea-Bissau in 1990 and served as a junior staff member on Projecto Palmares under the Department of Forestry of Guinea-Bissau. In late 1993, he was appointed as an English Teacher in a High School in the Region of Cacheu in Guinea-Bissau. From 1994 to 1998 he continued teaching at the school and simultaneously contracted as secretary to the Taiwan Medical Mission in Canchungo in the Region of Cacheu. After the Guinea-Bissau Civil war of 1998/99 he was transferred to the capital city - Bissau - as English teacher at Liceu Nacional Kwame N’Krumah. In the year 2000, he was hired as an English and Basic Economics teacher at the Guinea-Bissau National School of Administration (CENFA), where he worked until 2008, when he returned to the Gambia and served as forest ranger until 2009 and was offered the opportunity to further his education at the National School of Forestry. He graduated with a degree in Forest Management and Land Conflict Resolution in 2011. Back in Guinea Bissau, he is presently appointed as Program Officer of the Global Fairness Initiative in Guinea-Bissau.
Recent Activities
Visit soon to learn more about the GBLI program activities and milestones
Feedback
We would be pleased respond to your inquiries about the program. All questions and comments can be directed This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
Program Information
Program Supporter The Walmart Foundation
Implementing Partner: SEWA Ni Manager School (SMS)
The Challenge
Representing close to 20% of GDP, India's retail industry is the fifth largest in the world and the fastest growing in India, and it is expected to grow at double digit rates over the next decade. While retail, and many other sectors in the economy have grown rapidly, it remains that well over half of India’s working-age women are unemployed or under-employed. In both urban and rural locations throughout India women fall behind men in employment rates by as much as 50%, and the largest gaps are in the formal and organized sector of the job market. With fewer livelihood options, Indian women have experienced high rates of dependency and often remain in the lowest-skilled and lowest-paying jobs, mostly in the informal sector. There are many causes for this problem including high levels of illiteracy, lower primary school participation and graduation rates, and limited training opportunities on the skills necessary for success in the country's growth sectors. In addition to technical job skills, many women also lack fundamental "life skills" training centered on literacy, self-esteem, personal communication, basic financial management and other skills central to an empowered life and livelihood. Bridging this gap between available jobs and the fundamental hard and soft skill necessary to secure them is an essential step in addressing the challenge of underemployment of women and to building the confident, well-prepared workforce necessary to maximize the success of India’s growth sectors.
The Opportunity
With core support from the Walmart Foundation, the Global Fairness Initiative (GFI) and the Self-Employed Women's Association (SEWA) have launched a robust certificate-level training program aimed at delivering high-value, opportunity-driven instruction in retail sales and management to 36,000 women in India. The program is designed to prepare graduates for market-facing job opportunities, and build a foundation of key life and livelihood skills. ROTI trainings combine practical retail sales and management knowledge with the personal and professional life management skills essential for success in India’s competitive formal job market. The ROTI curriculum is designed in close collaboration with retailers and market stakeholders to ensure that the necessary hard and soft skills are well reflected, and it is rooted in GFI and SEWA’s training methodology that maximizes participation. Using highly accessible and interactive instruction aimed at building confidence and core skills, the ROTI courses will provide women the skills and opportunity to move from traditional low-skilled, low paying informal employment to stable, higher-skilled and higher-income jobs with real professional growth potential. The program is designed to bridge the opportunity gap between India’s underemployed women and the country’s fastest growing economic sector.
Program Leadership Team
Smita Bhatnagar, Director, SEWA’s Manager Ni School, India
Jennifer Marlay, ROTI Program Director
Recent Activities
Visit soon to learn more about the ROTI program activities and milestones
Feedback
We would be pleased respond to your inquiries about the program. All questions and comments can be directed This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
The BeFair Campaign
The Global Fairness Initiative launched the BeFair Campaign with the goal of expanding the reach of green technology and meaningful economic development.
Each year the BeFair campaign works with a community that could benefit from access to innovation. We listen to what community members consider their greatest challenges and what can be done to help them work more efficiently to improve their livelihoods. Having identified the technology the community needs, we partner with a kindred company that produces and delivers it.
Through our work worldwide we have witnessed the power a simple technology has to transform lives. A clear example was our first campaign, born out of our work with salt farmers in Gujarat India. In the desert salt pans of the Great Rann of Kutch, there is no permanent infrastructure, including electricity. Thanks to contributions by hundreds of supporters GFI successfully purchased and delivered 6,500 solar-powered lanterns to salt farmers in January 2011, helping one of the poorest communities in the world save nearly $400,000 per year or $60 per family.
By contributing to the BeFair campaign you can make a difference each year and ensure that your contributions directly address the needs of the poorest communities throughout the world.
Introducing the 2015 Campaign: Access to Technology
Each year GFI renews a campaign that's all about Access. Access to opportunity - Access to rights - Access to investment; these are the basics of fairness and the roots of the BeFair Campaign. For 2015 our theme is Access to Technology and you can play your part by supporting one of a few simple technologies that significantly improve the lives and livelihoods of the families with whom we work. This year, we are focusing on four communities located in four different countries: Guatemala, Guinea Bissau, India, and Nepal. Each community represents a different group of stakeholders in one of GFI's programs around the world. In Guatemala and Guinea Bissau, participants in the Verapaz Action for Sustainable Agro-Industry (VASAI) program and the Guinea Bissau Livelihood Initiative (GBLI) will receive micro irrigation kits that will help smallholder farmers increase crop yields and profits in an environmentally sustainable way. In India and Nepal, participants in the Salt Workers Economic Empowerment Program (SWEEP) and the Better Brick Nepal (BBN) program will receive clean cook stoves that will help salt farmers and brick workers reduce energy costs and harmful indoor air pollution from traditional cook stoves. With a small investment of $25 you can help provide these innovative, low cost and environmentally conscious technologies to working poor families around the world and help them access the tools they need to break the cycle of poverty to improve their lives and environment around them.
Where will your impact be?
Navigate through the side menu and the map below to see who the BeFair campaign impacts, where they live and how you can help deliver innovative technology and meaningful economic development to those who need it most.
Contribute Today
Program Information
Program Supporter: Humanity United
Implementing Partners:
Education in Every Home & Self-reliant Development Organization, Integrated Green Development Nepal, Prayas Nepal, Urban Environment Management Society, and GoodWeave International
The Challenge
With the booming population growth and urbanization in Nepal and construction ranked as the third largest economic sector in the country in 2012 and continues to grow. The high demand for building materials has fueled a demand for cheap labor and a lack of incentives for clean or socially responsible brick production on Nepal’s 1,200 registered brick kilns. The aftermath of the 2015 earthquake and subsequent reconstruction efforts have only exacerbated these troubling trends.
Although work conditions are inhumane, the brick industry provides jobs to thousands of unskilled laborers. Over 200,000 workers, of whom as many as 32,000 are children, labor in unhealthy and unsafe conditions in Nepal’s brick kilns. Brick workers are some of the most marginalized of unskilled workers, often bonded by debt to exploitive labor brokers. The informal nature of the industry, which operates on the periphery of communities and with little government oversight, has served to entrench exploitive labor practices such as bonded and child labor. The sector is dominated by migrant and seasonal laborers who live on the kilns during the brick season and have almost no link to local government, community organizations, or representation by worker associations. Unrepresented, unregulated, and for the most part unwanted, brick kiln workers have seen little progress on social, economic, or human rights issues; but with few viable income alternatives they lack the leverage to improve their working conditions or pay.
The Opportunity
While previous programs have raised awareness of these issues, Better Brick - Nepal aims to change the incentives within the industry and create a market preference for a “better brick” such that buyers of these bricks – including international agencies, construction firms, and end-consumers – are assured of more ethical production practices in their supply chains. At the same time, the kilns benefit from social recognition, technical assistance, and access to larger buyers.
Better Brick - Nepal started in 2014 with five pilot kilns committed to the goals of eliminating child, bonded, and forced labor and decent working conditions for all workers. Better Brick – Nepal has expanded to 40 partner kilns that employ approximately 8,000 workers and produce 222 million bricks (around 3.5% of Nepal’s total brick supply) each season. Better Brick – Nepal works closely with kiln owners, labor brokers, and workers to promote and ensure decent working conditions for all workers, including access to decent wages and a transparent payment system, healthy and safe living conditions, and an education for children living on the kilns. Better Brick – Nepal incentivizes responsible production through access to better production techniques and strengthened operations as well as promotional opportunities and linkages to better markets, including government and international buyers. Over time, the goal is to enable kilns to be both socially responsible and profitable, to demonstrate a market for an ethically produced brick, and to foster needed changes in the brick industry as a whole.
The Better Brick Standard
The BBN Standard (developed with leadership from GoodWeave International)
Recent Activities
In response to COVID-19, BBN and partners recently developed guidelines to help brick kilns safely operate during the pandemic. These guidelines, which adapt international and Nepali public health guidance to the kiln context, can be accessed here in English and Nepali.
PBS News Hour profiles Better Brick - Nepal
Better Brick - Nepal featured in "Nepal's earthquake: A push to rebuild without child labor"
Better Brick - Nepal featured in "How Nepal is trying to solve its blood brick problem"
"Clean Kilns" article includes Better Brick - Nepal's efforts to create child labor-free kilns
GFI Signs MoU with Federation of Contractors' Associations of Nepal (FCAN)
Mapping
Map of Better Brick - Nepal Kilns
Registered Brick Kilns in Nepal
Feedback
We would be pleased to hear your feedback on this program. All questions and comments about the initiative can be directed This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
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 BBN Standard | 107 kB |
Program Information
Program Supporter: Anonymous Donor
Implementing Partners:
Education in Every Home & Self-reliant Development Organization, Integrated Green Development Nepal, Prayas Nepal, and Urban Environment Management Society
The Challenge
As many as 32,000 children labor in unhealthy and unsafe conditions in Nepal’s brick kilns. The informal nature of the industry, which operates on the periphery of communities and with little government oversight, has served to entrench exploitive labor practices such as forced, bonded, and child labor. While work conditions are often harsh, the brick industry provides needed income to the families of these child laborers, and in the wake of the Gorkha Earthquake of April 2015, the sector has become a particularly vital source of jobs and building materials necessary for Nepal’s rebuilding and recovery. This has created a greater urgency to tackle one of the most damaging long-term conditions of Nepal’s brick sector: the stunting of educational opportunity for the children of the kilns.
The brick-making season in Nepal generally runs from November to May. During this time, children of kiln workers withdraw from school and accompany their parents to the kilns, where they remain with their families through the season. With this annual migration and periodic disruption of studies, children of kiln workers fall far behind their peers in schooling and often abandon their studies altogether to support their parent’s work on the kilns. Only a third of children who work in kilns have completed second grade, and a majority simply drop out before finishing primary school. The result is an entrenched cycle of poverty and relegation to low-skilled work for kiln children. In a country absent a viable social safety net and with a high risk of labor exploitation, children of Nepal’s brick kiln workers stand out as some of the world’s most vulnerable people.
The Opportunity
The Bridge Schools Program (BSP) is designed to meet the specific needs, seasonal schedules, and academic challenges of the children of Nepal’s migrant kiln workers. BSP provides an educational structure for kiln workers’ children built within the facilities and curriculum of Nepal’s public education system. Working in partnership with Nepal’s Ministry of Education and local education and child welfare NGOs, GFI has developed an integrated approach to “bridging” the gap that migrant kiln work creates in a kiln child’s education. The BSP curriculum is designed to work within the seasonal brick-making calendar, and still link up to the national education system’s schedule so that children who migrate to the kilns can return to their home school, current on all of the lessons and requirements, and be able to transition back into their regular local schooling so as to not fall behind their peers. The overall goal is to ensure that the children of Nepal’s migrant kiln workers are encouraged and able to continue their education, and that a greater priority and accessibility for children’s education is established on Nepal’s brick kilns. The BSP works on the same partner kilns as the Better Brick – Nepal Program and supports approximately 2,000 children a year across 13 districts and through a partnership with the Better Brick – Nepal Program is responsible for eliminating child labor on 17 kilns to date.
Recent Activities
PBS News Hour profiles Better Brick, Bridge Schools - Nepal
Better Brick, Bridge Schools - Nepal featured in "Nepal's earthquake: A push to rebuild without child labor"
Better Brick, Bridge Schools - Nepal featured in "How Nepal is trying to solve its blood brick problem"
"Clean Kilns" article includes Better Brick, Bridge Schools - Nepal's efforts to create child labor-free kilns
Connect with the Bridge Schools Program Local Team
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Country Director, Nepal
Feedback
We would be pleased to hear your feedback on this program. All questions and comments about the initiative can be directed This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
