Goal one: covering every village in Kamuli & Buyende.
Since 2019, the UCF has trained rural farmers in Kamuli & Buyende, on white sorghum. Our goal now, is to expand this work and cover every village in Kamuli & Buyende, an area that comprises 1,123 villages with 202,000 households and nearly a million people.
Kamuli & Buyende are two neighboring districts in our region of Busoga, which has eleven districts. To expand our sorghum work and cover every village in Kamuli & Buyende, all that we need is the postharvest handling and storage capability to handle our farmers’ produce on such a scale. Specifically, all that we are asking of you is to help us install a grain cleaning, drying and storage facility that shall both enhance our postharvest handling capacity, while linking our farmers’ produce with reputable buyers.
Impact:
Our region Busoga is known for poverty. Being a farming community, though, the main challenge every household here faces is the absence of reliable markets. Our grain facility will not only help with postharvest handling, but also, it will build new market linkages for our produce. Above all, it will help make our overall work self-sustaining.
Currently, the UCF provides all our farmers with free initial inputs (seed, tarpaulins etc), as many can’t afford them. This facility will change this by making many big buyers to view us as strategic partners, creating a steady income stream for our farmers’ produce. This will give these farmers the self-motivation to produce more, and in turn, the ability to use their own incomes to secure the needed inputs, making our work self-sustaining.
This facility will be installed by British firm Alvan Blanch, at a total cost of £339,403 (see detailed Quote). If you have the means to cover this cost on our behalf, so Alvan Blanch can simply come to Uganda and install this facility for us, you can do so by sending that money directly to Alvan Blanch. Our contact people at Alvan Blanch who put together the above Quote are Ivan Erimu, James Shaw and Christabel Blanch.
PS:- as mentioned in the above quote, the £339,403 only covers plant equipment, and its transportation to Mombasa. The total cost for installing this facility will be $814,000. Also: this grain facility is only part of an integrated agroprocessing plant that we want to have in the end, and whose goal is work with rural farmers across Busoga as a whole.
Goal two: 12 for 100% ADMIN self sufficiency.
That’s, multiplying production on the UCF’s 12 acre premises using irrigation and a little bit of permaculture, to ensure that 100% of our administrative overheads are met by us.
The ability to expand our work with rural poor farmers, and to operate with continuity, depends on our ability to cover our administrative costs on a sustained basis. However, like any other small African nonprofit, the UCF simply has no reliable source of support.
Currently, nearly ALL the support that we use to run our work comes from small online donations. And as said earlier, most of this money is spent on inputs (seed, tarpaulins, pesticides, fertilizers, spray pumps etc) that the UCF provides to all our target farmers totally free, only as a hand-up. But the day-to-day costs of running this work are huge.
And now, with our new goal of expanding our sorghum work to cover every village in Kamuli & Buyende, our overheads will be even higher. Help us put the UCF’s 12 acre premises to maximum use, using a combination of irrigation and permaculture approaches, to ensure that 100% of our overheads are covered by the UCF itself.
Impact:
With 100% ADMIN self-sufficiency, we will be able to expand our work to new rural communities anytime, operate with continuity, and spend 100% of the money that we raise from our charitable supporters on inputs for those farmers who need a hand-up.
To achieve 100% overhead self-sufficiency, all we need is year-round production on our 12 acres using irrigation, and putting each available space on our 12 acres to use by integrating an array of crops and livestock using permaculture approaches — including a chicken forest. Needed support: $101,968. A detailed breakdown is on this.page.