This project will plant 450 banana trees over one acre of the land that was donated in honor of Stephen Baker in 2017. It is an essential phase in moving toward future goals to help impoverished children and widows in the village of Kassanda, Uganda. It will offer labor jobs, local food and teach farming skills to ultimately allow job creators instead of job seekers. Future plans of the land will be developed to best serve additional needs of the village.
Since the days of the insurgency, when people would often run away to save their lives, there have been less employment opportunities available. People lose hope and their drive to find employment. Rural areas are extremely impoverished; along with inadequate health centres, schools, and roads. Uganda struggles with the serious problem of youth unemployment, and are twice as likely to be unemployed compared to other age groups. With 3/4 being under age 30, they struggle daily providing basics.
Agriculture is the core of the economy and the primary source of employment. Growing bananas and selling them is a positive reinforcement that there are options available. A large percentage of bananas consumed locally are grown by small-scale farmers in rural areas. The farm model for local food production has been quite successful. Proving that growing fruit is an important economic activity for communities like Kassanda and has great potential to improve livelihoods.
KCA will be able to realize a return on this investment within 12-24 months to aid in funding plans on this property in the future. Once the skill of turning banana crops into a commercial enterprise is mastered, other entrepreneurial youth can learn it, take advantage of being able to start their own farm and give instruction to others interested in bananas. Small farms are known to equal big change, this can literally give a whole village hope and security in farming.
This project has provided additional documentation in a XLSX file (projdoc.xlsx).
