Focusing Philanthropy + One Acre Fund
Through our partnership with One Acre Fund, subsistence farmers receive high-quality seed, environmentally appropriate fertilizer, crop insurance, funeral insurance, ongoing farming advice, and go-to-market assistance. Participating farmers consistently double their agricultural output. Treated as customers, the farmers repay One Acre Fund for the direct costs of the farm inputs they receive. Nearly 99% of participating farmers fulfill their repayment obligations. This results in over a 50% gain in farm income, making possible the family’s investment in food security and diversity, children’s education, health care, and supplemental income-generating initiatives.
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Problem
70% of the world’s poor are smallholder farmers who live in remote, rural areas, isolated from basic agricultural tools and training. Many of these farmers are not able to grow enough to feed their own families throughout the year, and face an annual “Hunger Season.” Year after year, they find themselves trapped in a cycle of low yields and continued poverty. 10% of children in these families do not survive to age 1; many more are malnourished, resulting in stunted growth and incomplete brain development.
Our Response
357,891 subsistence farmer family members are permanently out of starvation poverty because of our funding. We have made possible the expansion of a proven program into Tanzania, Uganda, Malawi, and Zambia. With the extra income resulting from heightened crop yields, participating farm families can assure food security and diversity, pay for children’s education, start an ancillary business, and/or improve their living conditions. $2.5 million has been contributed to date.
Why One Acre Fund
We sought to find a way to help the large fraction of all the world’s poorest people who are in subsistence farm families. When we first looked at One Acre Fund, they were already materially scaling their initial program in western Kenya and had successfully launched comparable programs in Rwanda and Burundi. We saw fidelity to their core program across the three countries and comparable results as they scaled and expanded. We knew this because of an exceptional commitment to measuring and reporting results at the farmer, region, country and organizational level. Taken together, this demonstrated capacity to scale on a proven model that was consistently delivering life-changing impacts for a large population in need. It was what we were looking for. We have established a unique partnership with One Acre Fund wherein Focusing Philanthropy is the anchor funder of One Acre Fund’s expansion into new countries. Once scale is achieved with our support, larger institutional funders finance further growth. Our catalytic role means we and our donors are achieving a highly leveraged impact, moving what could become millions of hard working subsistence farmers permanently out of starvation poverty.
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Helping hard-working subsistence farm families gain food security and economic opportunity.