1. What is SAFE?

The Sustainable Agriculture, Food and Environment (SAFE) Platform is a multi-stakeholder alliance initiated by the MIF, coordinated by Hivos and co-founded by private sector participants, donors and non-governmental organizations that share a common vision: improving business processes, addressing the challenges of sustainable agriculture while including smallholder farmers in global value chains.

The platform leverages existing knowledge, expertise, and resources from all its members in order to implement a series of projects that pilot or scale up innovative value chain approaches. The platform works with coffee and cocoa producers, and later will include other crops with replication potential. The two sub-regions that the project initially focuses on are Central America and the Andean region, where the founding members and the MIF believe interventions can achieve greater impact.

 

2. What does the SAFE Platform do?

The SAFE platform seeks to improve links between 150,000 smallholder farmers in Latin America and the Caribbean and global value chains.

SAFE has four main areas of work:

  • Climate-Smart Agriculture
  • Improvement of smallholders’ financial literacy and their access to financial services
  • Creation of commercial relationships in responsible supply chains
  • Inclusion of gender and youth as a transversal component

 

3. How did the SAFE Platform come to be?

SAFE comes from the vision of people who come from the private and non-profit sector that wish to improve business processes and include smallholder farmers in global value chains.

In 2015 this vision became true: the Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF), member of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) Group, approved an initial funding of US$2.6 million to create the Sustainable Agriculture, Food and Environment (SAFE) platform, which implements projects that will enable 150,000 smallholder farmers in Latin America and the Caribbean to capture more value from their participation in national and global supply chains, fostering their resilience to climate change and other external factors.

Hivos was designated as platform manager and 14 other partners joined in. The platform just closed its first successful call for proposals and has two ongoing projects in Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Colombia.

 

4. Who conforms the SAFE Platform?

The SAFE Platform is led by the Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF), Hivos and a group of 14 Founding Partners: Solidaridad Network, Rainforest Alliance, The Coalition for Coffee Communities, S&D Coffee & Tea, Farmers Brothers Co., Root Capital, Catholic Relief Services, Grameen Foundation, Keurig Green Mountain Inc., ECOM Trading, Starbucks Coffee Company, Sustainable Commodity Assistance Network (SCAN), COSA and Hans R. Neumann Foundation.

 

5. Who can participate in the SAFE Platform?

Anyone can participate with a SAFE project call as long as they submit their proposal along with one of the SAFE Platform’s partners, mentioned above.

 

6. How can an organization get in contact
    with a SAFE Platform partner?

Contact us at [email protected]. We will be more than glad to help you.

 

7. What are the project call dates?

SAFE launches project calls twice a year: Small Interventions (November) and Individual Project Calls (November and July). They are both very important and carry on different functions.

Individual Projects refer to SAFE projects that will be developed in one to three years with a maximum grant funding from MIF of US$1 million, together with a co-funding provided by the executing partner; with a total amount of US$2.5 million. Small Interventions are projects that should be developed in one year –although, there could be some exceptions- with a total investment of US$140k. 30% or 40% of this amount will be funded by MIF, and complemented with counterpart funds.

 

8. What are the characteristics of a strong
    SAFE Project Proposal?

SAFE Project proposals can have many characteristics, but they should all share the platform’s common vision: to improve smallholder farmers’ businesses, incomes and knowledge just as much as the partners’. Up next, you will find a series of characteristics that should be included in proposals:

  • Creation of commercial relationships in responsible supply chains,
  • Development and validation of methodologies to align and measure investment impact across landscapes and markets,
  • Inclusion of components related to the platform’s strategic area of value chain and responsible sourcing development,
  • Addressing gender equity issues within the coffee sector,
  • Improving resilience to climate change through the adoption of climate smart agricultural practices,
  • Empowering women and youth as agents of change,
  • Development of local capabilities,
  • Creation, implementation, dissemination of accessible tools and technology to boost impact.
  • Improvement of smallholders’ financial literacy and their access to financial services.

 

9. My question is not listed here.

    How can I contact you?

If you have general questions, you can reach us at [email protected].

If you have specific questions for SAFE Platform Staff, please see our contact information here.