One Acre Fund helps farmers in many ways – including helping them to sell their harvest at market. Recently, I was out in the field with our logistics manager to buy beans from One Acre farmers. Many farmers were interested in selling their surplus bean harvest to us – we opened a market point close to their farms, and offered a competitive price. At one of these market points, I met a new One Acre farmer, Alice Ndamwe. She joined our program in May 2009 of this year, and planted beans. On this day, she sold 44 pounds of beans for a price of 1,600 Kenya shillings (or about $22 USD). For Alice’s family, who live on a dollar a day, this was a lot of income.
Before Alice sold her beans, she showed me around her farm and told me about her involvement in One Acre Fund. Alice is the volunteer leader of the Beka Kwa Beka group, which contained eight farmers last season. For next season, she told me that she will add at least four new farmers to her group. She was excited for other farmers in her area to be part of One Acre Fund.
In addition to her work as a volunteer leader, Alice is a volunteer health educator in One Acre’s child health program. This volunteer position entails educating One Acre farmers about child health, as well as collecting data on child births and deaths. We track deaths in children under five for our farm families—this is part of how we measure the impact of our work.
Alice was proud to be a leader in her community. As we were talking outside her home, she interrupted our conversation to retrieve two One Acre Fund badges that identified her as a “facilitator” and a “light mother” – the titles we use to identify volunteer leaders.
In addition to her community work, Alice cares for her three grandsons. She is a widow, and her two adult sons do not live at home. I was amazed that she was able to do farm work, raise three children, and work as a “facilitator” and “light mother.” Alice is one of the many African women who take on extraordinary responsibilities in their families and communities – I am always in awe of their strength.
As Alice and I talked, she wanted to discuss her future. She is looking forward to next year’s harvest, and is already planning what she will do with her extra income. Earlier this year she took a home health training course in Bungoma, and she would like to purchase equipment and a uniform so that she can start working as an independent health worker with infirm people in the community. It is our hope that One Acre Fund helps all of its farmers to realize their dreams, for themselves and their children.
One of the most important parts of our core program model is the management structure we build in each district where we work. The core of this structure is the field officer, who works directly with our farmers. A group of five to six field officers is supervised by a field manager. Each district, at maturity, will have five to eight field managers, who are overseen by a field director.
John (center), our regional director, is observing how well Patyster coaches her new field officer. We build in coaching and feedback to our core program model at all levels—field managers receive mentoring as well as field officers. This is important because as we grow, we hope to continue promoting from within our organization.
When One Acre Fund decided to launch in the district of Oyugis, located in western Kenya’s Nyanza Province, we wanted to bring in talented field staff from our existing districts. We were lucky enough to have one field officer, Anne Adhiambo Midigo, who grew up in Nyanza and was fluent in Luo, the vernacular language.
Anne readily agreed to the move, and it has worked fantastically well. We are trying some variations on our core program model in Oyugis, and Anne has executed them excellently. She has earned the trust and respect of her farmers, her numbers outperform expectations, and she is teaching us as much as we are teaching her. In our office meetings it is always Anne that we call upon to lead us in song. From a personal point of view, her kids now live with her, which would not have been possible had she stayed in Bungoma West.