Sunita Rao
Region
Karnataka, India
Affiliations & Roles
Founder Trustee of Vanastree
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.