Sunita Rao

Sunita Rao is an ecologist by training and lives in the Malnad region of Karnataka, India. Sunita has worked with WEA since 2011, when her organization, Vanastree became a partner for WEA’s South Asia Small Grants Initiative. Sunita then became the Project Lead on the multi-year Seeds of Resilience Project. Her work interests include: Ethnoecology of forest home gardens in the Western Ghats; Designing Learning for Life modules in formal and non-formal education landscapes; Viability of nano scale, sustainable livelihoods & enterprises; Conservation and community mobilization in gendered spaces. Sunita has worked in Delhi, Pune, Andaman & Nicobar Islands and Lakshadweep. She was a Fulbright Fellow at the University of California, Santa Cruz in 2009 where she worked on agroecological issues. She has been living and working on a forest farm near Sirsi since 2002. Sunita is the founder trustee of Vanastree – a women farmers’ seed saving collective based in Sirsi.