Economic Empowerment

Afsco’s economic initiative is aimed at Income Generating Activities with the goal of promoting Economic empowerment of the rural poor and peri-urban in the development process. The main areas for intervention in this respect include the initiation of the following:

• Sustainable agriculture paving way for commercial crop production from subsistence to Sustainable Commercial farming
• Animal Husbandry
• Micro-finance
• Addition of value to Agro-produce
• Handcrafts

Sustainable Organic Agriculture

Sustainable Organic Agriculture (SOA) is described as an approach to agricultural production, which minimizes or excludes the use of agro-chemicals in favor of using natural alternative products within an individual’s farm, or in a farming community.

The major advantage of using organic products in farming include minimization of adverse aspects associated with inorganic chemicals e.g. retention of residues in food, avoidance of resistance of various pests to chemicals as well as non encountering of exorbitant costs of inorganic chemicals.

Afsco is therefore achieving this through training and encouraging peasant farmers/ communities to adopt sustainable organic farming.

Problem statement
Considering the nature of farming in Uganda and its agro-ecological conditions, Afsco believes that the livelihoods of the small holder farmers majority can best be improved through the adoption and implementation of sustainable agriculture (SA) practices.

Currently the majorities of farmers are not practicing Sustainable Agriculture and hence often face food insecurity and poverty leading to environmental degradation while in search for food. This is largely due to the following factors:

• Lack of skills and knowledge E.g. what, when and how to grow.
• Lack of information sharing and use.
• Lack of research back up
• Gender inequity
• Little advocacy in Sustainable Agriculture
• Few marketing opportunities (information, skills and outlets)
• Lack of access to credit facilities
• Lack of input supply and poor availability resources

Strategies

The organization uses the following strategies to address these constraints to solve the earlier problem statement with rural communities as the target:

• Capacity building for Sustainable Agriculture
• Advocacy program
• Lobbing (raising) funds

Capacity building for Sustainable agriculture

The capacity need for peasant farmers and the organization are in particular:

• Production techniques
• Marketing (farm planning and agribusiness)
• Organization development
• Advocacy skills

Capacity building for production techniques

 The main aim of the organization is to increase income of the rural peasants and other vulnerable groups from subsistence farming to commercial farming.  We target peasant farmers, vulnerable community members and Trainers of Trainers (TOT’s) and will consist of participatory, demand driven and objective oriented training with the support to participatory gender sensitive monitoring and evaluation.

The content is based on environmental sustainability, soil management, water
conservation, making and application of organic manure, crop production technology , food security, seed multiplication & distribution, agro-processing and
preservation, post harvest handling, as well as livestock Management market
orientation and optimal available resource use

Within marketing, capacity building is based on a practical and gender sensitive approach.  The major contents are developing a farmer based market based information system for domestic and export market, facilitate the introduction of alternative income generating activities, facilitate the formation of small holder business associations to trade linkages and research on appropriate and economically viable facilities of added value.

The main focus within the Organizational development support is on strategic planning and exploring innovative ways of the organization to collaborate and enhance impact.  It consists of facilitation or training.

Advocacy program

The advocacy program contributes to the community empowerment to actively participate in planning and budgeting processes at local government level.
This results in sub counties allocating adequate resources for sustainable agriculture activities.

The main activities within this program are stakeholders’ consultative meeting, awareness workshops at community level, training local government and local leaders in participatory gender sensitive planning and budgeting, gathering and information dissemination through research reports, policy and policy dialogue meetings.

Lobbying (Raising) Funds

The purpose of raising funds in the ministry is mainly for implementation of the planned activities to benefit the beneficiaries, to facilitate initial capacity building activities with in the targeted communities and the organization.

For long term funding, the organization will establish direct contact with the funding sources who are willing to support the organization financially and also in any other area that deem fit for Afsco members.
 

The organizations long-term plan is to initiate commercial farming activities. This is basically for sustainability as well as expanding its programs, of which its lessons will be carried throughout rural areas for campaign against poverty.  This ensures increased income at grass root levels to improve the livelihoods of the rural poor particularly focused on women, orphan /child headed families.

Components

This includes four major activities that involve the following components:

• Commercial Crop production:
  The following crops have been selected to be grown organically: Maize, Sunflower, Simsim, and Soya beans, Pineapple, Passion fruits, Mangoes, Oranges and Vegetables.
  The selected crops are processed into maize flour, vegetable oil production / oil extraction, and maize brand for birds and animal feeds.
  Selected fruits are processed using solar dryers.
  Juices jam and wine to be preserved, packed ready for consumption.
  All the seeds are tested at the Uganda Seed Scheme Laboratory for germination prior to planting.
  Irrigation systems will be adopted for unpredictable weather to help in crop production during drought in one demonstration garden.
   
• Animal husbandry
  This will greatly support the practicing of sustainable agriculture mainly in the area of manure making which include the following: - cows, goats, birds, pigs and bee keeping
  
  It is the plan to support the members by giving every five families one cow, one goat, one pig and some few poultry. The methods will be that one family has a cow, the other gets a goat etc and after the giving birth of any of these, the offspring will be given to one member in the five family team at random until the entire five members have acquired all the different category of animals. This will help the community in organic farming practicing thus alleviating poverty.
   
• Micro-finance Program
  The organization runs a micro finance scheme to help the rural communities fight poverty through Micro Credit and Saving Initiative.
  It is the goal to provide micro credit and saving services to transform the livelihood of the rural active poor into economically viable and sustainable living.
  Mission.
  The micro finance mission is to economically empower rural communities particularly women who are economically disadvantaged through the delivery of awareness creation, saving mobilization and giving out small easy loans.
  The organization will render these services in a manner that will safe guard its self-reliant and financial sustainability as a project.

Objectives

The main objective of the micro finance is to provide easy financial services to its clients by giving them accessible micro credit manageable by rural community who do not have access to commercial banks to acquire loans due to high interest rate and lack of collateral/ security.

The specific objectives of the project include:

• Providing capacity building workshop for Training of Trainers to be able to train others, coordinate and support capacity building programs to manage micro finance related activities.
• Identifying, sensitizing and raising awareness to adopt the better methods of using the loans so as to avoid default and alleviate poverty.
• Advocating and lobbying for favorable environment which is in line with the needs and aspiration of the micro-finance intuitions and local community.
• Enhancing transparency and accountability to stakeholders through improved performance, monitoring and reporting inline with the national micro finance best practices.
• Increasing access and participation of the rural poor particularly women to appropriate financial services
• Developing and strengthening the operational and management skills of partner organizations and target clients through provision of financial and non-financial assistance.
• Developing special projects and functions that can generate income thereby reducing over-dependence on external funding that is inline with micro-finance industry standard.
• Providing Value adding, gender sensitive, cost effective demand driven and sustainable services to members and to stakeholders.
• Building strong pro-active network that promotes and impacts on micro-finance clients in line with national MF best practices.

Strategies

The organization uses the following strategies to address these constraints to solve the earlier problem statement with rural communities as the target:

• Capacity building for micro finance sector players
• Advocacy program
• Lobbying (raising) funds
• Micro credit services

Core Values

• Community focus
• Transparency and accountability
• Team work
• Hard work

Target Groups

The Program has a positive impact on income generating activities in the area by promoting economic growth through provision of credit facilities, promoting non-traditional saving and also focusing on skills training especially in financial management and entrepreneurship development.

The beneficiaries include: - women, youth, and widows and. People with small-scale business in Jinja and the neighboring Districts.

Education Programs

The Education vision

To provide quality and affordable education in order to equip pupils with appropriate knowledge, skills and principles necessary to achieve success in both academic and social life thus our Educational motto
                                    

                                                  "IF OTHERS CAN, WE CAN DO BETTER”

Mission

To increase enrollment of orphans and other vulnerable children in schools as well as promoting sustainable education and living in a literate community.

Objective

• Provide quality but affordable education
• Prepare pupil to God fearing
• Molding pupil to respect oneself and others To set up academic standard to fit the competitive education environment through quality teaching, testing, debates discussions, seminars and quiz, so that a child can develop sound and logical reasoning
• Ensuring that a pupil who goes through AFSCO can attain skills, which can help him or her later to live self reliantly.

The Need

Afsco to date has identified  over 63 needy orphans of AIDS and other vulnerable children in the community.

This leave the rest of the destitute children without hope and the suffering continue due to limited resources.  Some are in primary and secondary education.

There is great need for the organization to plan in providing them with the following: accommodation, meals, scholastic materials, medical care, bedding, school uniforms and sanitation package.

Adult Education

The organization supports the middle age group of adults who never continued with their education and to have adult classes as well to help the aged who did not have a chance to go to school, at least so they can learn to read and write through this program.

Challenge

• High vulnerability among children being left behind by their dying parents
• Increased number of children demanding / wanting our support and care
• Lack of funds due to UN predictable funding sources and limited source of income for furthering organization plans
• No logistic and infrastructure for carrying out planned activities
• The majority of the community still living in absolute poverty (below poverty line)