Welcome to the August edition of our NGO of the Month feature. We’re determined to share with you some of the leading NGOs around the world to inspire and encourage you to create a better world.
Last month we featured Landesa, an organization dedicated to securing land rights for the world’s poorest people. Read our interview with Communications Director Rena Singer here.
This month we are delighted to be joined by Jenny Best, Spokeswoman for the One Acre Fund. One Acre Fund supplies smallholder farmers with the tools and financing they need to grow their way out of hunger and poverty.
What inspired the establishment of your NGO?
Our founder, Andrew Youn, traveled to western Kenya in 2006 where he met two farm families facing two very different realities. One farmer was yielding two tons of grain per acre; her family was thriving. The second farmer was unable to grow enough food to feed her family and had lost a child to malnutrition. Upon further investigating, Andrew found the answer to be incredibly simple: the successful farmer had access to three basic tools: high-quality seed, fertilizer, and farm training. The struggling farmer could not afford these basic inputs and lacked agriculture training.
Upon that discovery, Andrew decided to make small loans to smallholders for basic farming products and services. Within one year, he made loans to 40 farm families, laying the groundwork for a new innovation against global hunger and poverty.
What is special about your organization?
Well first, we only serve smallholder farmers. Everything we do–from sourcing seeds to trainings in the field–is focused on how we can make farmers more prosperous. Seventy percent of the world’s poor and hungry are farmers. If we can provide farmers with a complete set of services they need to succeed, we’ll be able to significantly reduce global poverty.
Second, and unlike a traditional microfinance institution, our loans are in the form of seeds, fertilizer and onsite training–everything farmers need to succeed. This asset and service-based loan ensures our investment is funneled into the most productive economic activity farmers have, and it addresses their needs from start to finish.
Last, we’re well on our way to becoming financially sustainable in field operations. While we’re technically a non profit, we operate like a business. Farmer repayments cover the majority of our field operating costs (73% in 2013) and we hope to increase this figure in the years to come.
How does your NGO change lives?
We provide a complete set of products and services rural smallholder farmers need to grow their own way out of hunger and poverty. On average, farmers who join our program realize more than 100% return on their investment and significantly increase income on every planted acre. We see farmers use that additional income to feed their families, to pay for school fees and purchase livestock.
Why is your organization important to the community you work in?
We serve rural smallholder farmers who lack access to the basic farming inputs and services they need to feed themselves and their communities. Our deep distribution network addresses that need in a comprhensive way and delivers services and products to the villages where farmers live. That’s a costly thing for our organization to do–deploying trucks and field staff to deliver several thousand tons of seeds and fertilizer to remote, rural areas of East Africa–but it’s one of the reasons we’re able to make the impact that we do.
What is your NGOs vision for the world?
A world in which smallholder farmers can feed themselves, their families and be prosperous. We have a scalable solution and hope to serve one million farmers by 2020.
