We are proud to share Eliminate Poverty NOW’s great accomplishments of 2019:
FARMERS OF THE FUTURE
For a decade, Farmers of the Future (FOF) has been our most ambitious project. Inspired by Professor Dov Pasternak’s vision, the goal is to teach subsistence farmers to approach farming as a business. If broadly adopted, millions of farmers could lift themselves out of poverty. This year we made important progress in realizing Dov’s dream.
• Strategic Planning: We developed a 3-pronged strategy to bring FOF concepts to hundreds of villages in Niger: increasing Niger’s technical capacity in horticulture, expanding the number of sites under direct FOF control, and working with international funders to apply FOF principles to their development projects. With hundreds of millions of dollars now earmarked for agricultural development in Niger, we are closer than ever to creating widespread economic transformation.
• The Dov Pasternak Horticultural Training Center: The center will “train the trainers,” expanding the number of field technicians to teach a businesslike approach to farming. This year we filed for registration with the Niger government, completed construction of the training gardens and developed plans to open our doors in Q4 2020. Funding remains a top priority to speed completion of the center.
• Improving Training Tools and Methods: Low literacy among farmers poses a major challenge to effective training, knowledge retention, and sustainability. Using our FOF sites as learning laboratories, we are developing tools and methods to more effectively train illiterate farmers and enable them to master new concepts and techniques.
• Building the Niger Leadership Team: To paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, for Farmers of the Future to be successful, it must be “of the people, by the people, and for the people” of Niger. LIBO is our local implementing partner and we are steadily strengthening its leadership team: recruiting key talent, mentoring senior managers and funding advanced training to expand their skills.
LITTLE ROCK SCHOLARS
For Eliminate Poverty NOW, secondary education is the gateway to good jobs and high income. In 2019, we awarded 14 new scholarships to outstanding students from Kibera, Kenya’s largest slum, bringing the total number of scholarships awarded since inception to 78. Eleven students from the class of 2018 graduated this past year and 12 more will sit for their final exams this November. In addition, with our successful campaigns to raise money for entrance fees for advanced studies, we now have 25 students enrolled in universities and technical schools studying for degrees in aviation, business, economics, eco-tourism, engineering, physics, sociology and more.
PLEASE GIVE GENEROUSLY. Each year we are able to fund only half the number of students who qualify for scholarships. And we need to speed the opening of the Dov Pasternak Horticultural Training Center. When fully operational, it will train up to 40 technicians per year, enough to support 200 new villages and thousands more farmers! So please give as generously as you can. Thanks to the generous support from our board of directors, 100% of your donation goes to work transforming lives in Africa.