Sowing the Seeds of Africa’s Green Revolution

Eliminate Poverty Now recently received a major gift from the Brach Family Charitable Foundation. Thanks to the generosity of the Brach family and others, we're moving full speed ahead with the launch of Farmers of the Future, one of Eliminate Poverty Now's Top priorities.

The goal of the program is to teach modern agricultural concepts to children in primary school. It’s one part classroom learning, one part 4-H Club and one part Junior Achievement. Working together with our partners – Pencils for Kids and Dov Pasternak, the father of the FOF concept – the program’s launch is slated for October 1^st, 2011, the beginning of the new school year.

We kicked off development of the classroom material during our visit to Niger in February.

A team of local technical experts and pedagogues is now collaborating to create illustrated pamphlets on 6 different subjects: from growing vegetables and trees to raising animals to managing a small farm for profit. Material will be completed by late summer, in time to begin training teachers in September.

If you click here, you can see the entire Tree Nursery booklet.

Two additional pilot schools are being added to the initial site at Gueriguinde which we visited in February.

“Mini-farms” are being created adjacent to the two schools so students can practice first hand what they learn in class. One of the two schools didn’t have a large enough yard for the mini-farm so the village leaders just agreed to give the school a 3-acre parcel a few hundred yards down the road. Wells are being dug, concrete water reservoirs will be poured and tree nursery and sheep enclosures will be built so the farms are ready for business come October.

To manage all the details of the start-up we have hired our first employee, Ibrahim Ali. Ibrahim will serve as Project Administrator with broad responsibilities to insure the launch stays on time and on budget.

Planning activities for FOF pilot sites installation

	May			Jun			Jul			Aug			Sep			Duration
	10	20	30	10	20	30	10	20	30	10	20	30	10	20	30	(days)
Ecole centre
Geo-physics study																5
Borehole																15
Construction of reservoir																14
Installation of drip irrigation equipment																5
Nursery Set-up																14
Construction of sheep fattening																5
Galbal School
Fencing and cleaning site																20
Well construction																20
Construction of reservoir																14
Installation of drip irrigation equipment																5
Nursery installation																14
Construction of sheep fattening																5
Guereguinde
Construction of sheep fattening																5
Setting up watering hose for Nursery																3
protecting wire for electric pump																2

He will also be responsible for carefully monitoring the program’s performance during the first pilot year so we quickly identify what’s working, what’s not, and course correct wherever needed.

Finally, we’ve started to explore opening a handful of pilot schools in the original Millennium Village Cluster in Sauri Kenya. Piloting in Kenya would bring the program to the English speaking side of the continent. The Millennium Villages Project (MVP) is active in 10 countries in Africa. So if the MVP gets excited about the program’s potential, it could provide access to several additional countries on the continent.

Through Farmers of the Future our goal is to help sow the seeds of Africa’s Green Revolution. And we’re on target for an October 1^st launch.