The overall goal of our economic empowerment programs is to help communities move beyond traditional subsistence farming practices and toward an entrepreneurial, business-minded approach to farming and related small businesses. People in Northern Uganda have assets.
They have rich land. They have time. And they benefit greatly from resources that help them to use these assets more wisely, to move themselves away from the poverty of subsistence farming.

The primary ways we bring economic empowerment to the communities we serve are solidarity village saving groups, providing microloans (through climaxx microfinance), and encouraging the practice of integrated agriculture.

We start and facilitate solidarity saving groups in villages. These are groups of local farmers who get together on a weekly basis to learn farming and agribusiness principles, discuss their current farming efforts, and hold each other accountable to continuous improvement.

A key part of each solidarity saving group is a demonstration farming plot – an area of an acre or less, where multiple crops are planted and multiple kinds of animals kept. This provides a laboratory for farmers to learn, as well as a place for others in surrounding communities to come and learn as well.

The primary focus of solidarity saving groups is on the production of field crops – corn, soybeans and peanuts. We help farmers select strong varieties to grow, train them on the benefits of row-cropping vs. traditional “scatter cropping”, introduce proper fertilization and chemical control of pests, and lay out proper timing for weeding and harvest. We help farmers understand the effort that will be involved with growing 1 or more acres of a crop, vs. simply growing a subsistence crop, so they have an understanding from early on that they’ll need to work hard. The result of this training and coaching is that farmers not only become business people over time; they also get particularly high yield on the crops they plant, resulting in greater profit.

Solidarity saving groups encourage farmers to save regularly. When they receive money from the sale of their crops, they hopefully save a portion of it, to be used for purchase of the next season’s seeds, tuition for their children’s educations, or other unexpected needs. Almost all of the farmers learn to save; the average amount of savings is $100 per farmer per year.
While this does not sound like much, the important thing at this time is that they are learning the concept of saving.

Farmers are encouraged to become entrepreneurial, viewing their farming efforts as a business, and not just as a subsistence activity. For example, we encourage them to store some of the corn or soybeans they produce for a time, so they can sell it later for a higher price when supply is low. In partnership with Climaxx Microfinance, we provide a storage granary and services. Careful records are kept so each farmer knows how much he has in the granary at any given time. In the future, the granary hopes to offer grinding and bagging services.

We also encourage and provide resources for the raising of animals as agribusiness enterprises
– pigs, chickens and goats. For example, CHILD maintains a piggery just south of Gulu. The piglets produced are used in demonstration plots, and also “loaned” to farmers who have demonstrated a commitment to wise animal husbandry by building an acceptable pigpen. The payback is that farmers must return a piglet from their first litter back to the CHILD piggery.

Additionally, we train people on how to raise chickens in a more controlled environment than the traditional “let them run around the compound” method. Proper chicken coops are built in many Villages we operate, with demonstration flocks fed with proper foods to maximize egg production.

There are 15 solidarity saving groups currently, with ten more planned for 2021. Each has 20-50 members.

Integrated agriculture is a holistic agricultural system that utilizes both animal husbandry and growing of crops in a tightly-related manner to maximize the benefit to the farmer. It aims to utilize output of crops to feed animals, and to use animal byproducts as fertilizers for crops.

Here is a small sample of the integrations that our solidarity saving groups and demonstration gardens train farmers on: Pigs, chickens and goats can be raised. Corn, soybeans, peanuts, sweet potatoes, grasses, pumpkins and vegetables are grown. Pigs and goats eat the grasses, corn, sweet potato vines and pumpkins. Corn stalks form the floor of the pigpen. Pig dung is naturally converted to compost in the pigpens. The compost is high-quality fertilizer for the next season’s crops. Corn, grasses and soybeans are made into silage to feed pigs. Pigs and goats have litters that can be sold. People eat corn, soybeans, sweet potatoes, peanuts, pumpkins, goat milk, eggs, chickens and pigs.

This more sophisticated farming system provides far more healthy food and income to a family than the older cultural methods of farming.

Our recognized expertise in women economic empowerment and agribusiness results in opportunities for us to share our methods widely across Uganda. We are carefully beginning to work with communities and NGO networks in two areas where community leaders we know have requested help.

One of these is in Pakele, a small town near Adjumani northwest of Gulu. The largest concentration of Sudanese refugee camps is around Adjumani, so it is a focal point of relief efforts for the refugees. The impact of the Sudanese on the Ugandan communities around Pakele is huge, and communities there are wrestling with how to help Ugandans deal with the cultural and economic changes.

Our economic empowerment obviously relieves physical poverty. But in Northern Uganda, with physical poverty in these communities comes emotional poverty. There is an unusual degree of shame and helplessness among rural communities in Northern Uganda. It started when everyone was herded into IDP camps for fifteen years with nothing other than relief handouts available for survival. And it continued as people moved back to villages with no skills or remembrance of how to farm well.

As we help farmers become business people, they begin some degree of healing from this emotional poverty. They see that they can do something about their situation and they have hope, new knowledge and resources to improve their lives. Coupled with spiritual healing that occurs in the context of the Gospel and the local church, people in the communities we serve are gradually released from emotional poverty as well.