The Raffaella Foundation was created by a global group of colleagues with a desire to connect our 30 years of collaborative work fostering diversity for equity, solidarity, and wellbeing in agriculture to people and programs embracing diversity in other sectors. We developed a strategy to connect our knowledge, tools, and practices, which use agricultural biodiversity to combat local and global inequities, to the knowledge and experiences of people outside of the agricultural sector. Our strategy was developed to catalyze expertise and partnerships across sectors to become a global cross-sectorial “host of diversity for equity”.
Formal establishment procedures for The Raffaella Foundation began in late 2021 with the creation of the Board of Directors, the drafting of By Laws and Governance Policies, our branding, and the creation of on-line presence for global engagement and communication. In early 2022 the legal process to incorporate the foundation was started, and on 13 April 2022 The Raffaella Foundation was formally incorporated in the State of Washington USA as a non-profit charity with IRS 501c3 tax exempt status.
In 2022, The Raffaella Foundation also formally took over hosting of the Platform for Agrobiodiversity Research (PAR), with the PAR Coordinator and lead PAR Scientists joining The Raffaella Foundation’s Agrobiodiversity, Climate Change and Social Equity Team. The idea for such a platform for research on agricultural biodiversity began in the late 1990’s through international discussions and meetings that stressed, the gaps in knowledge that limit capacity to enhance and use Agrobiodiversity optimally. The idea for “a facilitation unit” was welcomed by the CBD Conference of the Parties (COP) 7 in its Decision VII/3 on Agricultural Biodiversity in 2004 and the Platform for Agrobiodiversity Research (PAR) was formally set up through a stakeholder meeting in Rome in 2006. PAR was originally hosted by The Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT [formally known as IPGRI/Bioversity International] from 2006 to 2021.
In 2023 the Raffaella Foundation began its small grants program to support projects that embrace diversity in the following thematic areas: (i) Agrobiodiversity and Social Equity (ii) Climate change and Equity (iii) Education and Equity (iv) Gender, Age, Ethnicity and Equity (iv) Health, Medicine, and Equity, (v) Sports and Equity, and (vi) The Arts and Equity.
2023 saw the development of our Gender Equality Policy which was updated in 2024 and posted on our Website.