Did you know that a percentage of every order you place with Ned is donated to a nonprofit of your choice? For Women’s History Month, we’re highlighting Women’s Earth Alliance, one of the organizations that you’re able to support with every Ned purchase.
Women’s Earth Alliance is a nonprofit organization that catalyzes women-led, grassroots solutions to protect our environment and strengthen communities from the inside out. We sat down with Jen Palmer, Special Initiatives Lead at Women’s Earth Alliance, to learn more about the work that Women’s Earth Alliance is pioneering, how we help support that mission here at Ned, and how you can, too!
Can you share the origin story of the Women's Earth Alliance? What inspired your creation? And what's your core mission?
Our origin story is really near and dear to our hearts. It was born back in 2006 — 18 years ago. We're looking at our 20th anniversary coming on the horizon, but it was a collective of about 30 different women from 26 countries. They all gathered together in Mexico City with this beautiful shared vision to build an alliance that would put an end to environmental and gender-based violence. These leaders came together and started sharing strategies to conserve threatened ecosystems, transform health systems, launch sustainable micro businesses, protect indigenous sovereignty, and land rights, reduce toxic pollution, and ensure clean water access for communities. Very beautiful and big visionaries came together to set an intention to support women and women leaders [worldwide], especially women working on the front lines of the climate crisis.
As these women worked together, they developed this set of guiding principles. They were very clear about identifying key challenges and strategies, and also mapped out these regional hubs, and started looking at their very first project. This original vision grew and grew through the incredible leadership of our co-founders, Melinda Kramer and Amira Diamond. Our worldwide alliance continues to design and implement these incredible initiatives that are focused on protecting the earth, protecting ecosystems, and promoting safe and equitable conditions for women and girls. Our big vision is to ensure a just and thriving world. We have our impact report that's about to come out next week, which shows all of our amazing successes last year. Here we are nearly two decades later, and we've now catalyzed the efforts of over 52,000 women.
Your mission is centered around this idea that when women thrive, the earth thrives. There's so much research to support this. Can you elaborate on some of those principles?
This is the intrinsic thread that ties all of our work together. It’s sort of this multiplier effect. If we work with local women leaders, they build other leaders. So we might start with one woman and that will then become 10, and those 10 leaders will then become 100, and then a thousand, and then more and more. That intrinsic community and ripple effect is the theory of change. By providing long-term investment and support to not just the leaders, but the communities, we're able to ensure that they really can deepen and scale the impact of their solutions. We don't go into communities and [say], “This is what you should do.” These are their solutions to their communities, barriers, and challenges. With these resources, we not only can scale their initiatives, but we can also help them teach others in their community and keep that ripple effect going and helping the earth thrive. We do believe that when women thrive, the earth thrives.
I would love to know more about some of these key global issues that Women's Earth Alliance focuses on and some of the initiatives you're doing to empower the women in the communities that you support?
Women spend about 200 million hours a day collecting water. Often it's unsafe to drink. A lot of the younger women aren't able to go to school and get an education because they have responsibilities to collect water. Part of what we do as an organization helps empower women to design and lead their own water projects and turn this traditional cultural practice on its head so that more people — especially more women — can feel resourced and have that ability.
Women also make up 80% of climate refugees. Women are about 14 times more likely to die in a climate-related disaster than men. No matter where you are in the world, the climate crisis is here. It's here, it's today, it's happening, it's affecting all of us. Women are experiencing greater health challenges and economic, and social challenges from this. We can equip women with skills and resources so that they can lead climate adaptation and mitigation efforts in their communities. And to your point, health and safety is a truly profound issue that I think we need to be talking a lot more about. We try to help address these disproportionate health burdens that women are facing from environmental toxins, and increased violence in areas, especially areas that are going through environmental destruction. There's a tremendous amount of violence that's affecting the communities. We want to be able to help promote safer and healthier communities. Working with these women leaders is a great step forward to do that.
Can you share a few stories of a community that has transformed because of Women Earth Alliance's support?
We don't have time to go into all of it today, but if you're having a bad day and you need to feel hope in the world, go to our YouTube channel because you will be so inspired.
One [story] comes from Nigeria and it's this force of nature woman, Olanike, a founding member of Women's Earth Alliance [that] took part in that co-design way back in 2006. About two years later she participated in our first-ever women in water training program in Kenya. From there, she launched her own nonprofit and this nonprofit is still running today. It's called Women's Initiative for Sustainable Environment or WISE — perfect acronym. They're dedicated to improving health and protecting the environment, supporting women to promote and sell these clean cookstoves in their environment. So, focusing on the health of the women in the huts cooking. Now she's our program lead for all of Nigeria.
The collaboration between Women’s Earth Alliance and WISE, which is her nonprofit, is ongoing and it's had this transformative impact in Sub-Saharan Africa. They have distributed over 60,000 clean cookstoves across Nigeria. And she's been working with almost 2,000 eco-entrepreneurs and advocates. These are women who are poised to take their place and become the drivers of the whole clean energy movement in Nigeria. And our whole East Africa program is learning from them. So you might do a pilot study or a pilot project in one region, but that issue is tied to so many other countries and other regions. Clean cookstoves are not unique to Nigeria. This is an issue all across East Africa. Same with water, same with reforestation. We're always learning from them and we're learning together.
That's amazing. It highlights the value of the people who are having these experiences resolving the issues rather than some huge top-down organization coming in and telling people what they need to do.
I've been blessed enough to spend quite a lot of time across Africa. It's a region that I'm really close to. Most of my time is spent in Southern Africa rather than Nigeria, but I often think about the young girls in the community who are seeing someone like [Olanike] and what she's doing in their community and having that visual representation of [what’s] possible. “I can become educated, I can be a community leader, I can make this incredible change in the world.” That always makes me excited and proud of our women leaders because you can see it in the community — that direct relationship between the next generation that's coming. It's really impactful and just beautiful in my view.
Yeah, being able to see yourself in people that you admire who are leading you is invaluable. This is a little bit of a digression, but both of my parents are teachers here in California. And I've heard so many times, especially from my dad who's been teaching forever, how frustrating it is when bureaucracy steps into the classroom because he's there with the students [just like] your women are there on the ground. And when someone who has no real experience comes in and says, “This is what you need,” it creates more problems than solutions.
I have gone through that life lesson. In my younger years, I would go to these really, really remote villages and I'd have all these ideas and I would say, “So, what do you need? Do you want to be on social media? Do you want to learn this? Do you want to do that?” And they're like, “We need to learn how to grow food.”
Especially in the United States and in other Western countries where we have very easy access to clean water and clean food, you don't think [this] because you've not had the experience of being hungry or not having access to food.
Like I said, I've spent a lot of time in Southern Africa. And to this day, often when I pour a glass of water, I often put it in a little wine glass or something to celebrate it. I take a moment and I go, “This is such a gift.” Because when you live in a place where you don't have that, you realize just how precious it is.
One of the ways that Ned supports Women’s Earth Alliance is through 1% of sales being donated to a nonprofit at checkout. How does this type of support allow you to achieve your mission? How important is that kind of funding for you?
It's so vital. Partnering with brands like Ned plays a critical role in helping us achieve our mission. These collaborations provide us with the financial resources that are needed to support these grassroots women leaders. And as we said, these women are creating these lasting community-driven solutions in the face of pressing environmental challenges. Without your support, we're not able to help resource them.
But what I think makes partnership particularly meaningful is not just about the funds. The funds are vital, but it's also about our shared values. It's about our collective commitment to sustainability and women's health. The more that we can engage in these partnerships, we're able to raise that level of awareness, especially around the intersection of gender equality, climate justice, and environmental stewardship. These collaborations allow us to amplify those voices and shine a light on the work and the stories that are happening with these women.
What are some ways that our readers can support your mission?
We have [our] 20th-anniversary campaign coming up. It's called Rising Tides Rising Women. We have a vision of accelerating this initiative to support 15,000 women leaders to protect our planet and end the climate crisis. Any kind of support for that initiative and that campaign is tremendously valuable. Secondly, just sharing the word, having conversations like this, talking about women-led climate solutions with your family and friends, and following us on social media platforms. You can always purchase something from one of our partners like Ned. We have many funding partners that are all listed on our website that give back to us — supporting them helps support us.
And then I would say, start becoming curious and participate in your local community. It can happen in small day-to-day ways, [or] in a big way. Pay attention to what you're called to, what is your heart speaking to? Is it a particular issue? Maybe you're fired up about plastic pollution and you want to tackle that, or maybe it's a region that you love. Maybe you went to Bali one time and it just made your heart soar and you want to get more involved. There are lots of ways to help and be part of our community.
