Community Knowledge Worker (CKW) initiative

Thanks to your generous support, we’re continuing to see great progress with our Community Knowledge Worker (CKW) initiative in Uganda. More smallholder farmers know that they can rely on their local CKW to find the information they need to better treat their crops and care for their animals, which helps poor farmers increase their incomes and better provide for themselves and their families.

With your help, since July our CKWs have:

• Helped 4,000 more farmers get the agricultural advice they need, for a total of almost 75,000 farmers helped.
• Had 483,000 interactions with farmers!

In addition, since it opened in last year, the agricultural experts at our Farmer Call Center have fielded more than 1,300 calls from CKWs and other farmers who have more complex problems that cannot be resolved through searching our CKW database on the mobile phone.

CKWs are poor farmers too, and sometimes the information they are able to access helps them solve problems for themselves as well. Shamira Chebet, a CKW from the Kapchorwa region of Uganda, recently called the Farmer Call Center with a problem about her banana plants. These plants had brought her more than $450 in income the year before; Shamira also uses them to feed her family and had used the leaves and scraps from the plants to feed her cows and goats.

Needless to say, when her plants started to yellow and wither, she was very concerned. The Call Center expert told her to apply manure to the base of the banana plants, since they were showing signs of magnesium and potassium deficiency. Shamira quickly applied manure to some of the plants to make sure it would work, and found that the plants she had treated were soon greener and healthier than those left untreated. She now treats all her banana plants with manure, and tells her neighbors whom she helps as a CKW – many of whom are also banana farmers – to use this solution when they’re facing the same problem.

We’ve come so far thanks to your help. Thank you for your compassion and generosity!

There are more farmers and CKWs like Shamira who need your help, so that they can continue to earn income and provide for their families. We are so close to our goal – won’t you contribute whatever you can today, and ask your friends and family on your social networks to do the same?

Thank you again for your life-changing support!