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THANK YOU! You have helped improve people's lives through community-led action in 2016-17!
Scroll down to see how your generous gifts were spent and meet the people you've supported. Or download the full version of this year's Annual Report.
HEALTHY PROGRAM RATIOS
DIVERSIFIED, BALANCED REVENUE
FOCUS ON FOOD SECURITY
THANK YOU FOR YOUR GENEROSITY IN 2016/17!
You are the key to unlocking children’s potential through community-led action in Canada and around the world.
Focus on children and youth
Your investment supports healthy child and youth development through programs that improve food security, nutrition and access to early childhood and primary education.
Community-led action
You are empowering people to build their own self-sustaining, resilient and vibrant communities. The actions that communities themselves identify and work towards are always the most effective.
In Canada and around the world
The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals apply to all people everywhere. Your support is crucial to expand our impact for the most vulnerable populations in Canada and overseas.
MEET DAWUD & MISKU
Dawud and Misku have benefited from MILEAR'S GENDER EQUALITY TRAINING
“We have a good life now. Gender equality was the most important thing we learned,” said Dawud, acknowledging that it hadn’t always been this way. “I never helped my wife. The food in our home was not good. We used to be sad in the market when we couldn’t buy any food or clothes for the children.”
Our lives have been transformed.
Dawud and his wife, Misku, learned how to understand and overcome the cultural stigma attached to helping each other in traditional men’s or women’s work. Dawud now collects firewood, cleans, fetches water, and takes care of the children while Misku participates in farming activities. This traditional role reversal has led to significant improvements in their family’s lives.
They take pride in their well-kept home, their goats and chickens, and especially their children who are in school and well-fed. “Now we help one another. We have a good income and we don’t worry about our children,”
Despite drought, people are living better lives in Ethiopia’s Eastern Amhara Region. Your support is:
MEET AUGUSTINA
Augustina and her husband are feeding their children all year roundthanks to learning about DRY SEASON GARDENING.
RESULT’s support for dry-season gardening has been a life and family-saver for many smallholder farmers, including Augustina Dabuoh.
Working with my husband in the garden keeps us together and strengthens our love.
Augustina became involved in RESULT’s dry season gardening program when she and her husband learned it could help keep him from leaving the family to seek work far from home. These periods were becoming longer and harder for Augustina and her family, as the impacts of climate change have been delaying rains and leading to more crop failures.
Augustina received a water pump and was taught how to grow produce in her garden more efficiently. She also received drought-tolerant seeds, fertilizers, and fencing materials to keep animals out. Augustina is earning additional income and is now able to feed her children nutritious meals from the vegetables she grows.
Thank you! You’re helping Ghana’s smallholder farm families reap healthy harvests all year long.
They are:
YOUR SUPPORT HAS MADE A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE!
Caring Canadians like you have supported 160,000 people through the MILEAR and RESULT projects.
The $7.64 million MILEAR (Market-Led Improved Livelihoods in Eastern Amhara Region) project is currently in its final year. MILEAR is helping smallholder farmers, experiencing the worst drought in 50 years, to boost their crop yields and family incomes, and lift themselves out of poverty.
RESULT (Resilient and Sustainable Livelihoods Transformation) is a $19 million, six-year project, currently in its fifth year, which is reaching 120,000 people in 140 communities in the Upper East and Upper West Regions of northern Ghana. RESULT focuses on building assets, skills and income for vulnerable smallholder farmers, mainly women, in four areas: crops, livestock, aquaculture, and alternative livelihoods.
See how your investments are having a significant impact on smallholder farmers and their families in impoverished rural areas in East and West Africa.
MEET SARAH
She's creating strong connections between her communityand the land in the role of community program coordinator.
It feels like a movement.
Thanks to your support:
These new land-based education and garden projects complement school nutrition and healthy eating programs. One of the keys to their success is the role of the community program coordinator, who links community members with resources and activities that help to build stronger connections between them and their culture and history.
Sarah Cameron is Community Program Coordinator in Waywayseecappo First Nation, Manitoba. She has organized cooking classes, conducted home visits to plan backyard gardens, taught children the life cycle of seeds, and planned and held community events that get people talking and learning about traditional food.
For Sarah, the true mark of success is seeing community members’ smiling faces. “There’s been a lot of happiness,” she said. “By teaching our youth the skills passed on for generations we are preserving our Anishinaabe heritage. By practicing our traditional ways of gardening, hunting and foraging on Turtle Island, we honour the grandmothers and grandfathers. Mii’gwetch.”
THANK YOU! You are helping to rekindle traditional cultural practices around food in Indigenous communities.
Agriculture
Market-Led Agriculture - Ethiopia
Mahmood Hussein, father of two, is a passionate advocate for fruit and vegetable production among his fellow farmers. With access to irrigation, he is able to grow multiple crops per year.
The greatest impact is on my children.
Having benefited from training in fruit and vegetable production, water management, and from an experience-sharing visit to a nearby community, Mahmood is excited to expand his farm. He's proud of what he’s been able to accomplish and the effect it has had on his children: “They are now going to school, are well-fed, have good beds, and clothes,” he said.
Climate-Adaptive Farming - Ghana
Akolgo Abeiinga noticed the ravages of climate change and decided to do something about it. He established a demonstration farm and began to share his time, skills and resources with others.
It is my dream that this community will feed the generations to come.
Adukpoka Alemiya is one of his star students. Thanks to Mr. Akolgo's teaching, she has diversified her crops, doubled her yields, and almost tripled her income. She now feeds her children nutritious meals and is able to pay for their school books and fees.
Women's Livelihoods
Women’s Income-Generating Groups - Ethiopia
Pulled from school and married young, Hawa became a mother at age 12. By 24, she had five children and was not allowed to work or leave the house unaccompanied by her husband.
It has been a kind of awakening.
Her life started to change when Hawa and her husband learned how much more productive they could be if they worked together. MILEAR's gender equality training encouraged them to split assets and income equally. Hawa joined a group of 15 local women who founded a bakery. She is using the income she’s earning to open a canteen out of her home, which her husband is helping to build. Hawa is determined to give her daughters the opportunities and education that she never had.
Alternative Livelihoods (Aquaculture) - Ghana
Despite the fact that most couldn’t swim and were terrified of the water, women are now 70% of RESULT’s aquaculture participants. They have gained a new source of income and a new sense of pride.
At first I was afraid, but now I can earn an income.
Women like Christiana, mother of six, have mastered fish production for their own use and for sale. “I had never been on a boat before. I learned how to paddle, how to empty water out of the boat, and to always wear a lifejacket!,” she said. In 2016 alone, three fish farms (out of nine), including Christiana’s in the Upper West Region of northern Ghana, produced nine metric tonnes of fish. “With income from the sale of the fish, I can feed my children and send them to school,” Christiana said.
Children's Education
Girls' Education & Empowerment - Uganda
Rebecca is 12 and already a leader among her peers. Her classmates recently elected her Health Prefect and Head Girl, responsible for guiding them in matters of health and hygiene and for ensuring that they follow school rules.
Hunger is a problem in my community. Children fall sick because of poor feeding, and there are some who don’t have safe water at home.
She helps by working in the school garden, which supplements the school food program, and advocating for better sanitation facilities for her fellow students. "I had a desire to serve my school,” she told us.
Before & After-School Support - Bolivia
Like many families who work long hours for low wages, Araceli’s parents struggle to make ends meet. Eight-year-old Araceli, however, attends the Alpacoma Centre, a well-resourced spot for local students to do homework, use computers, and play safely.
When I come to the Centre, I have breakfast and lunch. At home, I only have lunch.
The Centre provides nutritious meals supplemented by produce from its garden. Araceli enjoys the vegetable soup, and watering plants in the Centre's garden. The Centre is nourishing her dreams, too: "I want to become a doctor to heal sick people so that they do not suffer," she said.
Nutrition
Urban Gardens - Bolivia
In Las Lomas, Bolivia, where 17-year-old food activist Brayan lives, a year-long drought has made fresh produce more expensive and created significant food insecurity. Home gardens are key to help families improve their children’s nutrition and health.
Without adequate food children do not commit to their studies and become sick.
Brayan has been teaching community members how to grow them in their own homes. He has taken part in a healthy nutrition project researching the causes and effects of hunger in his community. “If I could change anything about the world, it would be to promote helping each other, and to let us all be equal,” he said vowing to continue to raise awareness of how people can grow nutritious fruit and vegetables in their homes.
Youth-led Nutrition Education - Canada
Natoaganeg School is lucky to have a group of highly motivated Healthy Youth Champions – teen leaders who have made eating healthy “cool” at Eel Ground First Nation in New Brunswick. They organize harvest festivals, set up food stations for sports events, and offer healthy food choices at school dances.
Just because we’re young, doesn’t mean we can’t do something for our community.
The Champions also work at the new Natoaganeg Community Food Centre and have taken a lead role in the community’s Fresh4Less food box program. Most importantly, the Youth Champions mentor younger students. “We give them someone to look up to. You need to have a positive attitude and be willing to put in the work,” said a graduating member.