Summary of World Kind
World Kind is an international project aimed at providing rural communities, intially those on the outskirts of Sunyani (Ghana), with the neccesary skills to make a difference in their own lives. Our project aims to help communities to work together, develop their agricultural methods, plan for the future and establish an understanding of community group investment. Following successful completion of our training program we provide group micro-finance investment. The project was founded in Sunyani Ghana where we worked with SIFE Sunyani to deliver this project.
By partnering with SIFE Sunyani we ensure that our life changing project will continue long after we leave. SIFE Sunyani have agreed to visit the community once every month and help the communities to resolve any problems and reaffirm the training if necessary.
This year the project is set to expand to a further 3 countries, although this expansion is dependent on securing the necessary finances. If you would like to change lives and support Sheffield SIFE then please visit our sponsorship page or if you would like to make an investment into one of the specific communities then please use our dedicated World Kind website.
How it Works
This project has two distinct parts. Firstly, we teach the communities key skills through our educational programme. Secondly, once this has been completed successfully, we invest in the community using small micro finance groups.
Through our educational programme the farmers learn:
- How to improve yields
- How to develop better relationships with their customers.
- Decrease labour costs
- Work together as a community
- Invest as a community and share resources
- How to plan for the future through a co-operative insurance & investment scheme.
Following the educational programme we invest into the communities. The community micro-finance investment provides a loan for agricultural inputs and shared community resources, chosen by farmers in the co-operative, which we then purchase on their behalf. If any one member defaults the loan then the remaining members must cover the debt. It is this strategy which helps to ensure that our capital is returned and thus the long term financial sustainability of our project.
Our Impact
This year we have already made incredible impact by empowering four communities and 146 farmers to make a difference in their own lives. Our achievements for each of the four communities are listed below:
- We organised communities into a co-operative and established an executive board.
- Farmers, for the first time, worked together and created a forum to discuss challenges.
- Sessions on economies of scales, helped them to gain 10-20% discount on all inputs.
- New technique allows farmers to increase plantain growth & their yields by 300%.
- We've created demonstration sites for composting. This will help our environment by reducing need for chemical fertilisers & will remove waste from the community.
- We helped farmers to develop yield and cash flow forecasts, which they used to budget.
- We helped them to plan for the future through a co-operative insurance & investment scheme.
- We taught them about investments and showed how inflation would effect their community pot.
- Worked with co-operatives to partner them with firms who can guarantee sales.
- By encouraging communities to agree to prices and being ethical by sticking to them we've helped increase the communities income and the financial sustainability of our project.
- Our labour scheme showed farmers how by giving labourers produce, as part of their wage, they could reduce their labour costs, but increase potential earnings for the labourer.
- We explained that future investment was based on ethical repayment on our loan. Helping to reduce the default rate and foster ethical practices.
Finance & Sponsorship
This project is extremely resource intensive, with an initial development cost of over £6,000 for each new seed program planted. This project currently has no sponsors and is funded entirely through our commercial portfolio of projects. This severely limits our project.
If you would like to change lives and support Sheffield SIFE then please visit our sponsorship page or if you would like to make an investment into one of the specific communities then please use our dedicated World Kind website.
The Future
Next year we will be developing new partners in 4 locations across the globe. Each new partner will receive training sessions, as given to SIFE Sunyani, providing them with the necessary resources, skills and investment to empower new communities, through our education and investment package.
Project Partners
One of SIFE's greatest assets is it's international network of SIFE teams across the globe (to find out more about this please visit our about SIFE page). We believe that by utilizing this powerful network we can create a synergy of impact far greater than one team alone. So for this project we partnered with SIFE Sunyani Polytechnic (from the Sunyani Polytechnic University in Ghana).
Before we visited Ghana we instructed SIFE Sunyani to identify 6 communities in desperate poverty and, on our behalf, undertake our questionnaires so we could to better understand their needs and adapt our project accordingly.
One of the most important parts of this project was ensuring that our impact would continue and expand after we left. Therefore, we worked with SIFE Sunyani students ensuring they understood each aspect of the project and before we left we transferred all of our project resources. We've also set up a web link, to communicate for free.
SIFE Sunyani are continuing the work we started, visiting the communities at least once per month. They help to ensure the program is running successfully and run any extra sessions required.
If you would like to change lives and support Sheffield SIFE then please visit our sponsorship and partnership pages.
Image Gallary
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