Mennonite Economic Development Associates (MEDA)

MEDA – Mennonite Economic Development Associates – is an international economic development organization that creates business solutions to poverty. Our programs and investments contribute to the transformation of agricultural systems to create and maintain decent job opportunities for women and youth. Since 1953, MEDA has advanced agricultural transformation in 79 countries. Across our Program Plus approach, MEDA uses financial tools to scale businesses, de-risk investments, and crowd in others. We also use incentives to help financial services providers increase financing of the agribusiness sector. MEDA advances the business case for the nexus of gender and climate action and environmental protection by incentivizing agribusinesses and their suppliers to adopt new approaches, technologies, and tools and to take a gender-inclusive lens to their work. We are at the forefront of localizing development programming and shifting power. MEDA partners for co-creation with a diverse array of local agribusinesses, financial and other service providers, investment vehicles, cooperatives, farmers’ groups, and civil society organizations. Our alliances with local actors, as well as with national and local governments, are co-designed and implemented to ensure programs are relevant, holistic, and focused on system-level change and transformation. We create conditions for positive change that will continue to support people to lift themselves out of poverty long after our engagements end.