Food For All funding of these international projects can have a long-term, immediate impact on poverty-stricken areas in the world. Food For All has donated $70,000 to the following programs this year. In doing so, Food For All is fulfilling its mission of finding self-help solutions to help fight hunger and poverty.
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Lambi Fund of Haiti: Food For All sent $10,000 to this micro-credit project, which has a long-term impact on local nutrition by enabling small farmers to improve their beekeeping practices and infrastructure, and thereby increase their honey harvests in what is perhaps the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere.
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Grassroots Gaza: The project, partially funded with a $25,000 contribution from Food For All, promises to have long-term impact on local nutrition. All of the participating urban gardeners are female heads of households, and it is known that in such projects, women are more likely to improve family nutrition and the amount of food put on the table. In addition, these women are informally achieving a multiplier effect by helping other women in their extended families and neighborhoods establish their own gardens, providing them with seeds and other input, know-how, water when available, and encouragement.
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American Friends Service Committee: This group's project in Bosnia-Herzegovina was successful in its first rounds of funding and now promises to produce even more accomplishments. Specifically, it will establish two “anchor” gardens that will become independent and will serve to spin off more community gardens throughout the region, many of which will not need much, if any, outside support. The design of the project continues to draw attention to it: namely, the dual objective of increasing food security for Bosnian villagers, while fostering reconciliation among ethnic and religious groups that participate in the community gardens supported by the project. Food For All contributed $5,000 to this program.
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Zambia: Food For All funded $10,000 to an innovative effort to increase food production while reducing poaching and the killing of wild animals that invade farmlands. Past efforts to control such “wildlife conflicts” with police and military have either failed or had limited success. This project will use a tested method consisting of construction of an electric fence that will separate wildlife from farmers. The new fence will eventually benefit more than 3,000 households, enabling about 1,500 families to return to farmland recently abandoned due to wildlife conflicts. The Wildlife Conservation Society, New York, envisions the project leading to sustained surplus yields of maize and rice, supported by the proven market benefits of participating in the COMACO (Community Markets for Conservation) program.
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International Development Exchange — India: This project, to which Food For All contributed $10,000, has emerged from one that Food For All funded in early 2006. It focuses on self-help groups in 25 desert villages in India and impacts some 1,400 tribal women, representing a total of some 7,000 family members, who are among the poorest of the poor in that country. The project will train women farmers in alternative farming practices, such as diversified land use and vermiculture (worm farming for soil improvement), soil and water conservation, livestock health and crop production.
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Plenty Belize School Gardens: Food For All contributed $10,000 to fund school garden projects in Belize, run by Plenty Belize, in 32 primary schools attended by Mayan, Garifuna, Creole, Mestizo and East Indian school children. The project uses the school gardens to supplement the diets of the region's extremely poor pupils, and the gardens also serve as laboratories and training grounds for trying new crops and taking the knowledge home to family gardens.
