Food and Income for 500 Sierra Leone Farmers

Thank you for opening this newsletter, We’d like to inform you on the fantastic development that the Foundation has experienced in this first full calendar year.

Autumn 2016: Thinking Big, but starting small, and learning fast!

Starting microfunding and supporting 20 farmers in September 2016 turned out to be a great success: thanks to a 60-80% higher yield than their "usual" method, the farmers received additional income and all microloans we provided were fully reimbursed.

Soon the first expansion occurred in 2017

Thanks to donations in the last months of 2016, we were able to extend the project size to 50 farmers by March 2017. This second cropping season project was also reasonably successful, although problems occured with long-term and heavy rainfall when drying the harvest.

But not everything worked out as planned ...

In the rural countryside of Sierra Leone the harvest is usually dried on the grounds in the open air, but due to the extraordinary wet season the wet grounds caused slower drying and higher risk of molds and loss of quality.

Adopting the advice of our local program manager, Mr. M.S. Kamara, the board decided to facilitate additionals loans to buy Tarpaulin floors, so the corn could be dried faster and better. Thanks to the fundraising campaign during the summer of 2017, sufficient cash was available to make this possible.

Second extension: from 50 to 125 in October 2017

The aim is to help build a better life within a group of at least 500 farming families (3,000 family members) within 5 years. We want to achieve this by actively supporting them with good seeds, other essential means and agricultural practice training.

For the autumn of 2017 we planned to expand from 50 to 100 farmers. To make this growth path possible, a semi-annual fundraising campaign was carried out during the summer. Thanks to the support of our donors, we have raised more than USD 5500, =!

And we were able to extend the project to 125 farmers in October, thanks to adjusting the field size to the current one acre field size in Sierra Leone (as adviced by the program manager) (1 acre equals approx. 4,000 m2)

Next step in 2018: further growth to 225?

The next cropping season will start in March 2018. Many rural farmers would like to participate, which is why we are now striving for expansion with another 100 farmers.

We appreciate your support!

Finally

We hope to keep you informed by this report. If you might have other expectations, do not hesitate to mail us! we welcome your improvement ideas!

Thank you for supporting this initiative
Ben Bolland, Kapri Turay & Momodu Sheku Kamara.
e: ben.bolland@seedsforgrowth.nl