The majority of our women farmers live at or below the World Bank threshold for extreme poverty. We leverage proven agricultural technologies and trainings to rapidly lift these women and their households out of poverty so that they can afford school fees, healthcare and basic goods.
Our farmers enter into our program at a below-subsistence level, meaning that they do not harvest enough to feed their families. Within the first year of our program, our farmers reach surplus levels, producing enough maize and vegetables to feed their families for an entire year. Any surplus is sold for additional household income.
Women constitute 70% of the Zambia's agricultural workforce. Yet across Africa, female smallscale farmers consistently have less access to credit, technology and agricultural training than their male counterparts. We work to bridge the "agricultural gender gap" while improving economic and agricultural productivity for the region.
We actively incorporate affordable, clean energy technologies whenever possible. Steering away from equipment like diesel pumps, we work toward fossil fuel independence by using solar-powered water pumps that lift groundwater for maize and vegetable irrigation.
Our model fuels regional and economic growth and provides decent work for women and their children. We know that women with less financial strain tend to send their children to school, and that these children—especially their daughters—are less likely to leave school early to assist with household and farm management.
We seek to alleviate Zambian rural farming communities' persistent world aid dependency through our hybrid social enterprise model, which builds our women farmers to become completely self-sufficient paying customers. Though they start our program with technology subsidies, as they build their wealth, within 1-2 years they become self-sufficient and are able to prosper on their own.
Even though our women participants are small-scale, subsistence farmers, we promote climate-sensitive practices that they can maintain as they grow more successful. We teach climate-smart agriculture techniques that promote soil conservation. We reuse agricultural residue as soil cover and choose multi-use instead of single-use storage bags in addition to many other methods of minimizing waste.
