By Austin Bowden-Kerby | Project Manager
Hi everyone,
My wife Kim did a financial analysis of sales and expenses of the Chicken project since we began last March. We sold over 5 thousand chicks to farmers in Sigatoka, Navua, Nadi, Lautoka, and Ba at FJ $15 dollars a dozen (US $8.00). We just broke even (not counting labor or fuel). The major cost is feed, and as the Farm's coconut plantation becomes mature the feed cost will drop by half or even more. We have to make this project sustainable, and we are getting there!
The good news is that we have gotten a small grant from the Ford Foundation (US 3.3K) through GlobalGiving... which will alow us to aquire the "heritage breeds" of chickens from New Zealand, so we will able to provide even higher quality chickens that are suitable for the villages and farms and well adapted to tropical weather. Wouldn't my grandmother be proud!
We have recently made contact with larger NGOs and we hope to partner with these on their ongoing marine conservation and poverty alleviation projects so that what we do becomes integrated with good projects all over the region. So much good is being done that we hope to add value to, especially the over one hundred communities here in Fiji that are setting aside areas of ther traditional fishing grounds as no-fishing tabu areas so that the coral reefs can recover.... they need a sustainable alternative to fish, and we make that option possible.
Thanks for your continued support!
Austin
abowdenkerby@gmail.com
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
