A joint effort from
We are delighted to see the Women's Safety Accelerator Fund (WSAF), excel and make a tangible difference in the lives of thousands of women tea workers in India. By empowering women and adolescent girls, we are helping them break free from gender-based discrimination. The program has amplified their voice, improved their overall well-being, and paved the way for a brighter future.
The Women’s Safety Accelerator Fund is a bold program contributing to safe and empowering workplaces
Through WSAF, funding partners address gender-based violence in agricultural value chains.
With a combined investment till date of €2 million, the program accelerates the scale of the UN Women ‘Global Women’s Safety Framework in Rural Spaces’ and ensure that ‘all women and girls are socially, economically, and politically empowered in rural spaces that are free from sexual harassment and other forms of violence’.
Initially, WSAF started implementation in the tea sector in India in Assam and West Bengal, and has expanded to Kerala and Tamil Nadu.
Building on its success, the program has entered its next chapter: Women’s Safety Accelerator Fund (WSAF) 2.0
The Women’s Safety Accelerator Fund 2.0 builds upon the impactful foundation of WSAF 1.0, driving systemic change to address gender-based violence and create safe, dignified, and empowering workplaces across India’s tea sector. With a holistic, survivor-centred approach, WSAF 2.0 strengthens redressal mechanisms, expands thematic interventions, and enhances partnerships to ensure sustainable impact for workers, families, and communities.
Key Focus Areas
- Improving access to sexual and reproductive health services and awareness programs.
- Creating sustainable income-generating avenues for workers and families.
- Equipping women with essential digital financial knowledge and resources.
- Strengthening psychological safety and providing survivor support mechanisms.
- Addressing vulnerabilities of mobile workers through education and protection programs.
- Enhancing internal committees, grievance redressal mechanisms, and policy alignment with national and international standards through stronger POSH compliance.
Our Scale and Reach
- 321 Tea Estates Reached across Assam, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala
- 250,000+ Tea Workers Impacted, with a dedicated focus on women workers and their families
- WSAF 2.0 aims to reach 550 tea estates, benefiting 385,000 tea workers in India by 2026, creating Gender Transformative Business Models to be scaled and replicated to other regions and agricultural value chains.
How does the Women’s Safety Accelerator Fund work?
Through resources and collaboration with a range of stakeholders, the Fund will take a holistic approach to addressing the challenge of gender-based violence.
The Fund will work to build awareness and understanding of gender-based violence and supports the tea industry to put measures in place to prevent and respond to it, while strengthening the capacity of local NGOs.
The Fund will accelerate the scale of the UN Women ‘Global Women’s Safety Framework in Rural Spaces’, created with the support of Unilever, by leveraging the efforts and capacity of local NGOs and producers to drive more sustainable, long-term shifts in safety within the tea supply chain.
The focus is on promoting tangible and continuous improvements for women workers in the Indian tea industry by:
- Enabling tea producers to implement the UN Women ‘Global Women’s Safety Framework in Rural Spaces’ which aims to ensure that ‘all women and girls are socially, economically, and politically empowered in rural spaces that are free from sexual harassment and other forms of violence’.
- Empowering local implementers, service providers, and eco-system partners to support producers as technical, training or mobilization partners, to build capacity and move from actions to outcomes.
- Establishing a common platform to support and sustain change, embedding continuous improvement facilitated through the Fund’s engagement.
© Himanshu Choudhary
Get Involved
If you share our goals, you can strengthen our initiative. To enable the Women’s Safety Accelerator Fund address violence against women and girls, we issue an open invitation to public and private stakeholders to support the Fund.
Contributing to the Fund will give you an active voice in driving the success of your investment and in contributing to a safe and empowering workplace for women.
To learn more about how your organization can get involved, contact:
