• Honduras

Last July, we shared how our field partner in Honduras, FIPAH (Foundation for Participatory Research with Honduran Farmers), was working to organize field schools (ECAs) to train community-led farmer research teams (CIALs) over five regions in Honduras. These CIALs are tasked with:

• On-farm conservation of farmer seed varieties
• Secure seed supply through seed reproduction and sale
• Participatory plant breeding
• Community-run seed and gene banks
• Cooperative grain storage systems

(Read more about FIPAH and the CIALs in this PDF.)

Their goal is to establish one ECA per region that will offer both general and region-specific agricultural training for the CIALs. The ECAs plan to develop a total of eight training modules, and three modules have already been developed:

1. Organizing an ECA (a field school)
2. Preparing the ground for a garden and constructing seedbeds
3. Planting and transplanting. 

FIPAH also reports that there are 53 participants, including 37 women and 16 men from 21 communities over 5 municipalities of Honduras. The ECAs currently have seven species of vegetables from which they can produce quality seed, and they are actively expanding this repository. These community leaders are distributing seeds that families can use to start their own gardens, and they will continue working with recipient families through January 2017. 

FIPAH, the ECAs, and CIALs are laying the foundation to self-sustainability through community-led education and local seed production. By engaging community leaders to teach agriculture specific to each region, they ensure that this knowledge will remain in the collective memory of the community for generations to come. 

We never take your support of these projects for granted. So, thank you, and may 2017 find you well!

• Kenya

In September, I visited several women’s groups in northern Kenya that are supported locally by Seed Program International partners HODI and SSNK. I want to tell you about the Khairi Women’s Self Help Group in Marsabit, who is using a popular Kenyan form of self-financing called a Chama to supplement the agricultural resources SPI provides.

Chamas are self-managed and member-invested groups of 15-25 women who meet regularly to support one another and decide which member-led business initiatives the Chama will finance. Its systems are kept simple and transparent to ensure that all women participate in decision-making and benefit from the collective investments.

Groups are usually formed with trusted friends and family, so meetings often feel like family gatherings or a tea party with friends. Besides business planning, meetings also provide the group with opportunities to participate in educational programs with HODI and SSNK where they learn about the benefits of setting goals, planning ahead, and saving. Women at the Khairi Women’s group in Marsabit participate in a monthly business management and savings training, and also receive individual mentoring.

Read more ...

• Syria

Seeds for Syria

Hello supporters!

It's been over a year since we closed this project, and I want to tell you about a few things we've learned from our experience and give you a final update about our work toward delivering seeds to Syrian refugees.

We created this project in response to an increasing need for sustainable food sources for growing communities of Syrian refugees — a need compounded by dwindling aid reserves. We knew we were shipping into a volatile area, but we have experience with negotiating difficult customs regulations and felt the demand warranted the risk. True to our partner-centric model, we were working with leading Turkish NGO Orient for Human Relief, via the US-based Karam Foundation, to better understand the situation on the ground. Paperwork in place, we were excited when we received news that the initial shipment was delivered into customs as expected.

However, as the relationship between Turkey and Syria continued to break down, the seeds were unnecessarily detained by Turkish customs. We tried everything we could think of to save the shipment, but finally accepted that the seeds would be lost. Facing this failure and uncertain about whether we would ever be able to deliver seeds to Syria, we closed the project and promised that your donations would be used to provide nutrition support for displaced Syrians.

It's always distressing when we can't get seeds to the people who desperately need them. SPI relies on our partners to support shipments and distribution and sometimes that's just not enough, especially in areas with an unstable political climate. We stand by our reliance on our partners; it's one of our greatest strengths. Going forward, we realized we would have to do more if we wanted to increase the types of tools we can use to ensure that shipments reach the right people when they're needed.

Because of this experience and others like it, SPI has expanded how we work. Over the past year, we've increasingly reached out to official embassies and have developed working relationships that can keep us informed about their country's political climate and how best to negotiate customs regulations. Further, Our Program Manager, Naima, has been collecting information about what we've learned from working with each country's import regulations. Our goal is to create a database of country profiles that can be used as a customs checklist for future shipments to ensure that seeds are delivered without incident.

We're also more deliberate about how we process requests for seed. Rather than making assumptions based on prior experience, we ask our partners and recipients to share what they know to help avoid any unnecessary delays. Finally, we've invested in identifying local sources of high-quality seed and developing relationships with those seed providers when we're unable to ship from our own inventory. It's important to us that people receive the support they need, even if it means working a little differently.

Thankfully, this story has a happy ending. Karam and SPI didn't give up on delivering seeds to Syrian refugees. In November 2015, Karam hand-carried seeds during a youth camp mission trip to work with refugees in Turkey. Your support, through GlobalGiving, made this possible!

P.S. Be sure to check out Seed Program International here at GlobalGiving to see what we've been up to lately!

• Honduras

Copan Department, Honduras is a mountainous region famous for its pre-Colombian archaeological site and beautiful landscapes. But in late 2015, the government of Copan declared a famine emergency as ongoing drought led to widespread loss of three most important crops for income and nutrition: corn, beans, and coffee. In this context, fresh vegetables grown in gardens at home (where scarce water is carried anyway) provide essential nutrition and income. Back in Spring, we reported that seeds were on the way to the Copan region in the care of Rotarians from Asheville, North Carolina. The results: greater than we could have imagined!

It Takes a Team

Here’s the amazing story of how SPI seeds reach families in Copan:

• Dozens of people, businesses, and Rotary clubs in western North Carolina contribute to the Rotarians Against Hunger (RAH) program. RAH packs meals for local food banks AND sends seeds to Rotary-linked projects worldwide.
• This Rotary support is matched by people like you who gave via GlobalGiving to support these seeds reaching people in need. 
• The Rotary Club of Copan Ruinas, Honduras applies to receive seeds from the RAH program. They work with local charities like Mennonite Social Action Committee to design a training plan and choose seeds that are appropriate to local gardeners’ culture and purposes.
• Members of the Rotary Club of Asheville carry the seeds to Copan on their annual trip that also includes dental and eye care clinics.
• Mennonite Social Action Committee distributes the seeds, along with training, to those most motivated families in the region.

The Harvest

190 families in 15 villages received seeds for vegetables including mustard greens, spinach, carrots, onions, and squash. Training was provided on topics ranging from terracing the steep land, to planting and transplanting technique, to organic fertilizer sources. In the end, our program partners actually counted and weighed the harvest:

• 30,000 bunches mustard greens
• 20,000 carrots
• 6,500 pounds green beans
• 60,000 cucumbers
• 6,000 bunches spinach
• 4,500 bunches onion
• 30,000 squash
• 50,000 bunches radish

What a tremendous haul—credit is due to the hard-working gardeners and their trainers for achieving this harvest in a time of drought and general famine.