Digital Volunteers

 

* this page was created in the middle of the pandemic in 2020, and is now obsolete *

 

Lend us some digital and/or creative skills to enable the extreme poor in our region build some functional level of resilience, in the face of the economic hardship that has been exacted on us by COVID-19. Please read on below, to see how you could help.

 

My name is Anthony, a small farmer here in eastern Uganda. I have lived in extreme poverty most of my life, but I am not content letting the status quo prevail. I am also founder of the UCF, a nonprofit social enterprise that you can read about on this site.

 

Our struggle is 2-in-1:  the economic hardship arising from the coronavirus pandemic, vs endemic poverty:

 

The coronavirus has impoverished the ultra poor in our region, like everywhere else.

But, long before this pandemic had shattered our livelihoods, many rural smallholder farming households in our region had historically lived in abject poverty, in particular due to the absence of reliable markets for our produce. And right now, people like us simply have nothing to count on in the rebuilding process. This is because our only means of survival (agriculture) has itself long been synonymous with extreme poverty.

 

Help us both to Rebuild, and to Build Resilience:

Below is how you can put your creative skills to use, to help us see a better world:

 

1). The UCF has a fundraiser that is intended to help the extreme poor in our region build some functional level of resilience. Please see: https://go.rallyup.com/endpoverty

We are seeking the help of some creatives, to help amplify that fundraiser via social media, to enable us leverage the power of the masses to raise the needed support.

Specifically, this fundraiser is intended to help us develop an agro-processing plant that shall both reverse poverty and create jobs in our region, by minimizing post-harvest food losses; creating new market linkages for rural poor farmers, and linking our produce with agri-value chains. Details here: http://ugandafarm.org/plant-details/

 

2). The UCF is seeking collaborators from anywhere in the world, to help us develop this plant. One way you can help us find collaborators is by helping share this page.

 

Note: we are seeking a threshold of $15m to get this plant off the ground. But, as described under “Funding Targets” in our current fundraiser for this plant (on the link above), we will install a specific portion of this plant once the money we have raised is at intervals of $240k; $620k; $1m and $15m. That is, we will begin developing this plant once we raise $240k, and we will complete it once we have raised $15m in total. So, every little support that we can raise will make a small incremental beginning.

 

Help us to rebuild, and to build resilience.

Anthony    < anthony AT ugandafarm.org >