News Archive

November 2010: One Acre Fund Included in Foreign Affairs article

One Acre Fund's operations model is included in an article on Africa's agriculture development in the November/December issue of Foreign Affairs, the world's most prestigious magazine on international issues. Click here to download and read the article in full.

October 2010: Spreading the News about Smallholders from Kampala to Iowa

In October, One Acre Fund's Tony Kalm spoke at the AgriBusiness Forum in Kampala, Uganda. Just a few days later, One Acre Fund's Stephanie Hanson spoke on a panel at the World Food Prize symposium about the constraints faced by smallholder farmers. Click here to see a video of the panel.

September 2010: One Acre Fund on Chicago Public Radio

In an interview on Chicago Public Radio's Worldview program, One Acre Fund founder Andrew Youn discussed how One Acre Fund grew from 30 farm families to 30,000 farm families in just four years. Click here to listen to the interview.

July 2010: One Acre Fund Featured by Chicago Council on Global Affairs

The Chicago Council on Global Affairs featured One Acre Fund's service model and farmers in its Global Food for Thought blog. Senior Fellow Roger Thurow visited our Kenya operation at harvest time. Click here to read what Roger thought of his field visits.

July 2010: One Acre Fund Op-Ed on Smallholder Farmers

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer features an op-ed on smallholder farmers co-written by Danielle Nierenberg of the WorldWatch Institute and One Acre Fund's director of policy and outreach, Stephanie Hanson. The op-ed was also published in South Africa's Mail & Guardian. Click here to check out the op-ed.

June 2010: One Acre Fund on PBS NewsHour's Website

The PBS NewsHour, which is known for its in-depth coverage of international issues, highlights the innovations of One Acre Fund's program model in a story on its website. Click here to check out the story.

June 2010: One Acre Fund Wins Financial Times Sustainable Banking Award

One Acre Fund is the proud recipient of the Financial Times Sustainable Banking Award for Achievement in Basic Needs Financing. The awards attracted 156 entries from 110 institutions in 44 countries. The basic needs financing award is a tremendous validation of One Acre Fund's model from some of the preeminent thought leaders in the banking world.

April 2010: One Acre Fund on Nextbillion.net

In a recent interview on nextbillion.net, Andrew Youn and Eric Pohlman discuss One Acre Fund's business model in detail, together with One Acre Fund's unique approach to satisfying our customers. Click here to check out the interview.

April 2010: One Acre Fund Awarded a Prestigious Skoll Award

One Acre Fund is honored to announce that we are the recipients of a Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship! This three-year, $765,000 award will allow us to quadruple our program size and serve roughly 100,000 farm families.

The Skoll Foundation is known for its incredibly thorough due diligence—they have verified that we are on a path to create as much human impact as the best organizations in the world. For more on the award and on Skoll, check out the entry on our blog, or check out the announcement page on Skoll's website.

February 2010: One Acre Fund in Stanford Social Innovation Review - again!

One Acre Fund's unique program dashboard is discussed at length in the Spring 2010 issue of Stanford Social Innovation Review. Transparency is one of our core values at One Acre Fund, and we are proud to share our progress with everyone who's interested! Our dashboard is updated regularly - if you haven't taken a look recently, feel free to check in on our progress.

December 2009: One Acre Fund meets President Kagame of Rwanda

Thanks to the generous introductions of US Ambassador Symington and Rwandan Minister of Agriculture Dr. Kalibata, One Acre Fund's Eric Pohlman had the honor of meeting President Kagame, one of the world's greatest political leaders. Eric very briefly introduced One Acre Fund's work to President Kagame and thanked his government for their excellent support over the past two years.

President Kagame expressed much appreciation for One Acre Fund's service to more than 7,500 Rwandan families. At the following Monday's Field Officer Meeting, our Rwandan colleagues received the message of their President's thanks - news of their daily efforts had made it from their village, to their province, to their Minister of Agriculture, and now finally to their President!

November 2009: One Acre Fund Chicago Lunch and Learn

On the heels of our tremendously successful Chicago gala, One Acre Fund invited Wall Street Journal correspondents Roger Thurow and Scott Kilman to speak at a special event at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs!

Roger and Scott spoke about their new book, "Enough: Why the World's Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty". Over 30 people attended the discussion - check out pictures from the event on our events page!

October 2009: One Acre Fund reaches 12,000 families

One Acre Fund recently enrolled our 12,000th family! It's hard to believe that just two years ago, we were serving fewer than 600 families across Kenya, and are now serving twenty times that number in Kenya and Rwanda. We are on track to help 40,000 families pull themselves out of hunger by 2011 - if you'd like to help, we invite you to support our work by donating. Every dollar goes a long way in Africa!

October 2009: Third Annual Gala Dinner in Chicago on October 29

One Acre Fund had its third annual Gala and Silent Auction on Thursday, October 29th at The Mid-America Club in Chicago! The event featured a keynote speech by Mike Anderson, Chairman, President and CEO of The Andersons, Inc., as well as 5-minute Video Tour of Kenya from Andrew Youn! On the night of the event we raised over $50,000, and donations are still rolling in! For more information on this event and others, check out our events page!

May 2009: Room to Read Founder John Wood joins One Acre Fund board

We are very pleased to announce that John Wood, founder and executive chairman of Room to Read, has joined One Acre Fund's Board of Directors!

Since its founding in 2000, Room to Read has helped educate over 3 million children in the developing world by building schools, libraries, and computer labs, and funding girls' scholarships. John's work has been profiled in publications including the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, and he is the author of the legendary social enterprise book Leaving Microsoft to Change the World.

John's decision to join the One Acre Fund board is a significant endorsement of our success to date and our potential for the future - please join us in welcoming John!

May 2009: One Acre Fund in BusinessWeek

One Acre Fund is mentioned in an article by Dipak Jain, Dean of the Kellogg School of Management, as an example of how MBA programs can help create lasting social value.

September 2008: One Acre Fund in Stanford Social Innovation Review

One Acre Fund is mentioned alongside some very prestigious organizations - Vipani, KickStart, and IDE - as a leading NGO working with one-acre farmers. The article argues that scalable solutions for the extreme poor require four characteristics: real impact, cost-effectiveness, sustainability, and replicability. These are the very metrics One Acre Fund is tracking on its march to reach the scale of 40,000 farmers by 2011.

August 2008: Second Annual Gala Dinner in Chicago on October 2!

We hope you will join us at The Ritz-Carlton Chicago on October 2nd at 6:00pm for the Second Annual Gala Dinner to benefit One Acre Fund! We hope to build on the success of last year's event, which netted $20,000 for our farm families in Africa. One Acre Fund founder Andrew Youn will discuss the program's accomplishments over the past year, which include reaching over 2,000 farm families. For more information, see our press release.

February 2008: One Acre Fund article in American Magazine

American Magazine ran an article on One Acre Fund in their February 2008 issue, discussing the One Acre Fund model and approach, and Andrew's work in the field.

December 2007: One Acre Fund article in Northwestern alumni magazine

The Northwestern alumni magazine ran an article on One Acre Fund in their Winter 2007 issue, chronicling our development and progress.

November 2007: One Acre Fund fundraiser dinner in Chicago a huge success!

One Acre Fund hosted a gala fundraising dinner at Spiaggia in Chicago on November 1, with delicious wine pairings donated by Candid Wines. 115 friends of One Acre Fund attended, raising more than $20,000 toward helping our Kenyan and Rwandan farmers.

September 2007: One Acre Fund begins expansion to Rwanda

One Acre Fund recently kicked off an exciting pilot project with 40 farmers in Rwanda, our first expansion outside of Kenya. The pilot is designed to prove the effectiveness of One Acre Fund's poverty-elimination model in a new agricultural and political context. If successful, we hope to rapidly expand our operations to serve thousands of families over the coming years. Stay tuned for our progress!

June 2007: One Acre Fund opens new district

One Acre Fund recently opened its second district of operations in Kenya, bringing our total farm families served to 550. We are in the early stages of a rapid rollout, and expect to grow at least 5 times in size next year.

June 2007: One Acre Fund wins Mulago Social Investments Grant

Mulago Social Investments awarded One Acre Fund a $100,000 grant this summer. The Mulago Foundation systematically chooses the best high-impact, scalable nonprofit solutions in the developing world.

March 2007: One Acre Fund featured in Minneapolis Star Tribune

Feature article chronicles One Acre Fund's early success and future promise.

January 2007: One Acre Fund wins Draper Richards Grant

The Draper Richards Foundation carefully funds the best early-stage nonprofit organizations, and just awarded One Acre Fund $100,000 per year for three years! The rigorous application process involved a panel of twelve top agricultural leaders and references, who all believed in our basic program model of investing in farmers to end poverty. The grant serves as a call to action, providing the overhead and capacity for significant program expansion - we need core program funds more than ever to accomplish our work!

December 2006: One Acre Fund in Glamour Magazine!

One Acre Fund's work with inspiring farm women is briefly highlighted on page 95 in Glamour's monthly column: "How to be a Hero in Five Minutes."

October 2006: One Acre Fund on TV!

One Acre Fund's founder is interviewed on CBS-Chicago's Saturday morning show.

September 2006: One Acre Fund on Chicago Public Radio

One Acre Fund is featured in a fifteen minute interview at noontime, on the Worldview show with Jerome McDonald

September 2006: Harvest increases more than 4 times

We have just finished our first complete harvest cycle! Our farm families grew 4.3 times more food vs. last year, and 98% repaid program fees to One Acre Fund.

August 2006: One Acre Fund farmers begin passion fruit trials

Passion fruit is a round little fruit with a hard shell and a syrupy inside. There is high market demand in both Uganda and Europe for this bizarre, sour fruit - creating the potential for our farmers to earn enormous profits (4x their current farm income) and improve their livelihoods. We just began trials on 5 acres of land with 25 farmers.

July 2006: One Acre Fund featured in BusinessWeek Online

One Acre Fund's founder talks about a "day in the life" of One Acre Fund.

May 2006: One Acre Fund wins an Echoing Green grant

One Acre Fund was one of 12 young "social start-ups" selected by the Echoing Green Foundation, out of 850 applicants, for a two-year startup grant.

May 2006: One Acre Fund wins two major social business plan competitions

One Acre Fund won first prize in both the Yale and Stanford social business plan competitions, out of approximately 30 and 60 competing teams, respectively.