Recent News

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.