The DR Congo (DRC) is one of the poorest and most food insecure countries of the world, and the country's 5 million orphaned children face particularly grave hunger and malnutrition. To address the challenge of under-nutrition in orphanages, Farms for Orphans provides training, tools and support to vulnerable youth in environmentally sustainable, small-scale agricultural practices including culturally accepted insect farming, beekeeping, fish and poultry production.
One child under the age of 5 dies of starvation every 3.6 seconds. For millions of kids, chronic malnutrition will result in stunting - a condition that stunts a child's physical and cognitive growth. Good nutrition is the foundation of child survival, health and development. Farms for Orphans is working to alleviate hunger and malnutrition in one of the world's lowest socioeconomic sectors- orphaned children- through small scale agricultural practices , starting in the DRC.
FFO provides food-insecure orphanages with the training, equipment and support to start their own farms. Specifically, we provide training in agricultural practices that are environmentally sustainable and climate-smart. For example, farming insects (a popular protein source in DRC) requires significant less land, feed and water to produce an equivalent amount of protein as typical livestock. Our programs provide youth, with little capital or land, the means to grow and sale their own food.
We expect the effect of our program to be a decrease in malnutrition, micronutrient deficiencies, and anemia. Furthermore, farming can bring economic empowerment to our partners through the sale of extra yields at market, transforming orphanages from a drain on the community to a community resource. Orphans may also learn the farming process, affording them the skills necessary to support themselves and become productive members of their communities.
This project has provided additional documentation in a Microsoft Word file (projdoc.doc).
