Cherrie Atilano
“It’s really a matter of building partnerships where everyone is a Winner, building a platform where the government has a face, where the private sector can add their corporate social responsibility. But at the end of the day, the Winners are the people, the beneficiaries.”
Cherrie Atilano is the President and Founding Farmer of AGREA Philippines. She is also a Co-Founder of HATIENDA Holdings Inc., an agritourism and agri-processing space to produce Filipino agricultural products for local and exports market.
In a country where poverty and food insecurity are pervasive, Cherrie De Erit Atilano is working to develop a living model of a replicable “one island” economy, founded on sustainable agriculture, livelihood programs, environment, community-based tourism and quality education of the farmers and fishermen including their children. To that end, she founded and leads AGREA, an agriculture-focused and for-purpose inclusive enterprise anchored on Ecology of Dignity. She also spearheaded several organizations and initiatives in agritourism and rights of women farmers in the Philippines and an agribusiness – focused impact investing in Southeast Asia focusing on unbankable smallholder farmers as well as the Move Food Initiative and AGREA Rescue Kitchen that are now impacting 30,000 smallholder farmers and saving 200 Metric Tons of food wastes while feeding the poorest of the poor; the latter two initiatives were launched as reactions to the specific challenges of the pandemic.
Learn more about her work at https://www.agrea.ph