SEATTLE, Wash. (October 16, 2008) New market opportunities for some of the world's poorest farmers will be within reach in the near future, thanks to a $6.4 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to World Vision. The PRORENDA project is a groundbreaking initiative designed to benefit smallholder farmers in Angola's central highlands, 60 percent of whom are women, including war widows and female heads of vulnerable households. Beneficiaries also include people with disabilities sustained during Angola's 27-year civil conflict.
By connecting smallholder farmers in the central highlands to major urban markets for crops such as potatoes, carrots, and onions, the project seeks to raise the incomes of 51,000 smallholder farmer families. Project funds will be disbursed over a six-year period, enabling World Vision to equip and train farmer organizations to strengthen their "value chains," improving business activities such as production, marketing, packaging, and sales.
"This funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will enable us to implement community-level, economic transformation in a country that is courageously rebuilding itself," said Rich Stearns, president of World Vision. "Hard-working farmers will be given opportunities to grow their businesses and provide for their families, helping to support the growth, health, and stability of the region."
Main objectives for the project include: 1) Increasing the ability of farmers to compete in urban markets by developing sound strategies and adding post-harvest value to products, 2) Enabling the effective organization of smallholder farmers to negotiate better prices, increasing opportunities for small business loans and achieving economies of scale, and 3) Enhancing the quality of products and increasing crop yield through the adoption of improved technologies that protect the environment.
Angola's people have struggled to grasp new opportunities following nearly three decades of war that decimated the country's basic infrastructure. During the war, more than 4 million of Angola's 11 million people were displaced. As the long process of rural resettlement has continued, many have found themselves without the resources they need to provide the basics for their families.
World Vision has worked in Angola since 1989, and since 2002 has implemented rehabilitation and development programs in the agricultural sector in Huambo and the central highlands of Angola where approximately two-thirds of the population lives, including a high proportion of war-displaced returnees. World Vision also has a formal partnership with the Institute for Agronomic Investigation and the National Seed Service to identify and evaluate improved crop varieties and promote the adoption of improved production technologies. Partners in this project include the Institute of Agrarian Development of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, the Ministry of the Family and the Promotion of Women, and the Bank of Savings and Credit (BPC), ACDI-VOCA, MSU and Alfalit.
About World Vision
World Vision is a Christian humanitarian organization dedicated to working with children, families, and their communities worldwide to reach their full potential by tackling the causes of poverty and injustice. Since 1993, World Vision has established 47 microfinance institutions worldwide, with nearly half a million active borrowers, and an outstanding portfolio of nearly $250 million. Increasingly, this work is expanding into rural areas, where loans to farmers (through farmer organizations) are combined with efforts to increase incomes by expanding access to markets. For more information, visit www.worldvision.org.
About the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Guided by the belief that every life has equal value, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation works to help all people lead healthy, productive lives. In developing countries, it focuses on improving people's health and giving them the chance to lift themselves out of hunger and extreme poverty. In the United States, it seeks to ensure that all people - especially those with the fewest resources - have access to the opportunities they need to succeed in school and life. Based in Seattle, the foundation is led by CEO Jeff Raikes and co-chair William H. Gates Sr., under the direction of Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett.
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Contact:
Karen Kartes, World Vision, 253.815.2163, mobile 206.351.4315
[ Any views expressed in this article are those of the writer and not of Reuters. ]
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