You know how incredible I think this is.

I do have some questions though. (You already anticipated that didn't you?)

1. Will the living plots for the families have land available to provide food for the families and provide them with food security?
2. Will your Dutch Investor contract which crops are to be grown? Will you have freedom of choice in the crops?

This week there is a huge agricultural fair here at the university. (I am thinking that I heard someplace that this University has the major agricultural college in Thailand.) It is close enough to the apartment and noisy enough that it is driving me nuts! Anyhow, I think I might have mentioned to you a Buddhist Community in Thailand called Asoke. It is a community running on a sufficiency economy. They started raising their own food (vegetarian) and then selling the excess in the local market. They then opened vegetarian restaurants in the locals where they are situated. About the same time as I moved here, a group of about 30 of them were invited to settle on a large piece on University land. I went over yesterday and attended the fair and visited their farm. The community invited people from all of the Asoke communities across Thailand and there are about 500 members here this week. They have gone into dried fruits and vegetables, herbal medicines, SOAP, natural juices (They had passion fruit!) I left with a big bag of organic popcorn and a trade deal that I will teach them English and they will feed me! Today they dropped off a cabbage large enough to feed me for a month. I hope this isn't their idea! :-)

Anyhow, the community as a whole has become so prosperous that they want to send some of their members back to university. There will be some - maybe 6 - who will be starting Masters degrees in a pilot program in development of sufficiency economies. The program is under development but is looking at how the single sufficient family radiates out into the community and globalizes step-by-step.

By the way, they are pretty high tech too. They live in these simple thatched roof buildings or tents but the have a single building that is filled with computers and internet connections!

Hurray, hurray for you!

Hurray, hurray for you!

And for you too, Linda!

This is all most exciting.

Christina,

What are the eligibility criteria?

Would some of your night-children stand to benefit from this? Or most, or all, of them?

Great vision!

Now time for you and Norbert to have the great recuperation you both deserve!

:)

it is a bright idea christina

Christina you are always amazing with ideas evryday. I really think that all this sissues that you keep on bringing about are the same for all of us.I pray for that this project works because the people of Nothern uganda just need something radical like what you are doing to change their lives. Good luck and i would personally like to follow this step by step as it progresses.

Christina, my gut and my head both are jumping up and down saying - go for it! Will post some thoughts later.. :)

Linda "Blessed by Gulu!" Nowakowski said:

1. Will the living plots for the families have land available to provide food for the families and provide them with food security?

Food security for the families is an absolute objective - which model is used to make that happen (ie, individual plots growing 1 family's food or communnal plots that the community farms for subsistence+) is not yet determined.

2. Will your Dutch Investor contract which crops are to be grown? Will you have freedom of choice in the crops?

The company will contract which crops they will buy but it's unlikely that 100% of the crops grown will be sold that way. Built into the crop rotation plan will be foods that can be sold on the local market as well. That said, the company we've been talking to is on the look-out for new and viable products to sell on the European organic foods market and are keen to see what kind of solar dried foods we might come up with.

David Bale said:

What are the eligibility criteria?

With thousands upon thousands of child families, that's going to be a very tough question, David. There are indeed some among the Charity for Peace night commuters we work with. There are also many night commuter mothers in the group we work with who help to look after many children who fall into this category. At the Gulu conference, some women reported emotionally of trying to offer their meager support to as many as 30 children who are not their own, who have nobody else to turn to and nowhere to go. I'd really love to get more of their input on what the eligibility criteria might be.

I also think that if the WE Center Gulu community has a hand in identifying the children to benefit (ie, they know them), that will lay a very nice foundation for the two WE Centers to work together.

Ronald Otieno Omondi said:

i would personally like to follow this step by step as it progresses.

Ronald, there is a nifty Watch List feature you can use to track discussions you want to follow on Onet. Your Watch List is on the left side of your screen, underneath the help links. At the bottom of that block there should be a link that says add. Click that now, and whenever something new is posted here it will move to the top of your watchlist and appear in bold.

Niny Khor said:

Christina, my gut and my head both are jumping up and down saying - go for it! Will post some thoughts later.. :)

Niny it would be absolutely fantastic to have some of your thoughts in the mix on developing this model. We definitely are going for it - the more input from good thinkers like you we can get, the better the end result is likely to be. Can't wait to read what your brain is noodling on!

Its absolutely a brilliant idea. There is so much room for wealth creation and sharing via agriculture in Africa.

Kicking the tires:

Irrigation?

Transportation?

Storage?

Security?

Thanks to John Powers for this link to CELEC - "collecting and Exchanging of Local Agricultural Content" - Looks to be active in Lira, next to Gulu.

Our dutch friend has a meeting with USAID tomorrow to talk about land clearing in the north... fingers crossed :)

a journey of a hundred miles starts with a single step.its quite encouraging for the good plans that people are having to assist our brothers in the Northern Uganda.personally am delighted and ready to support wheneve am needed.lets hope the meeting will be successful.whenever more workers are needed to support the project Christina call me i can volunteer for atleast three months.

CJ am sure it really will be a great fullfilment for me seeing all these happen. All my life have been longing for such a project, it really touches my heart to know that these helpless children may one day find shelter for themselves. They live in very pityful situations, infact this is a vision come true for me, am so happy that I physically will be part of this.

Rory Turner said:

Its absolutely a brilliant idea. There is so much room for wealth creation and sharing via agriculture in Africa.

Kicking the tires:

Irrigation?

Transportation?

Storage?

Security?

Rory, I've been trying to get Norbert to slow down long enough to chime in here. He grew up on the farm and has some useful experience with all of these issues. Security is a doozy - it's impossible to tell right now what the rebels are planning after recent collapse of the peace talks in Juba.

USAID is apparently in the throes of changing how they fund projects and everything is on hold, though it seems a project like this is not off their radar to consider in some form.

Meanwhile, I am kind of excited to think about what would happen if we posted this project at the new MyC4 platform that's being discussed over here: http://www.omidyar.net/group/foo dchain/news/207/

Amon, you'd be most welcome as a volunteer. Please join us in a discussion about designing a LiA volunteer program over here: http://www.omidyar.net/group/chi ldren/news/1/

You are amazing. Wonderful project, great idea, but I would expect nothing less from you. All our best wishes and prayers coming your way from your family in So Cal!

On security, I already know we have the support of Norbert's uncle, who is the military commander responsible for IDP resettlement. Through another connection, I'm meeting with someone on Tuesday who advises the President on IT policy issues. If we can get a commitment for government provided security that would be a very good thing. Don't know if that's possible yet but since it's within reach to pursue we are pursuing it.

I'm hoping to have a group of volunteers come to help us prepare this project. I haven't heard back from IC on whether some of their volunteers want to be involved or not. If they have already found something then I will be looking for 2-3 more to come sometime - hopefully within the next couple of months.

(bouncing off of something David's question above jarred a response to) what I'm thinking is to use a team of volunteers to specifically work with the WE Center Gulu community (ie, night commuters and their families) to develop selection criteria and identify the community of child-headed households that will be included in this project.

George tells me there are 25 such families who sleep at the WE Center. There are also a lot of our night commuter mothers who are pitching in to take care of groups of orphans - often whole families or remnants of families that are trying to survive under the guidance of a 15 year old. Without their parents, many don't know where their family land is and have no more home to go to. A strong bond between the WE Center Gulu community and the children at Opok Farms - connected through the internet - could be a truly beautiful thing.

The volunteer input would require working intimately with the WE Center Gulu community, data collection, criteria setting for selecting the families, and preparing documents for potential investors that outline the social aspects of the project's potential impact.

Hope beyond all hopes - Hey NINY wanna come to Uganda and help me power up this thing right?

[Edited by author: Christina Jordan on 18 Mar 2007 01:39 PST: typo]

Hey Christina - when are you thinking of starting?? :) My schedule next year is still up in the air, so you never know!

Was just thinking a bit about the farm this weekend, wanted to wait a bit since i think it's important to get the enthusiasm going first before others chime in with suggestions, as it often detracts from the vision of the project. Nonetheless, here are some of the first few things that investors might ask (beyond the selection)

1. How would you address the issue of whether this is child labor?
2. How do you ensure production sustainability? Farming sometimes take a few years to really take off - do the participatnts know farming and would they get into it? Do you have enough safeguards againts weather shocks?
3. Do the kids 'graduate' from the program?

That said, your hunch to pursue steady demand from steady buyers is probably key. Saw this article in a magazine in yoga class yesterday about Delicious Peace in Uganda: http://commongroundmag.com/2007/ 03/deliciouspeace.html

[Edited by author: Niny Khor on 19 Mar 2007 08:13 PST: ps]

PS: meeting Mr.Grimes tomorrow EARLY morning for breakfast - very much looking forward to hear about his trip - though this morning I woke up with a humongous sore throat and probably can't talk..:)

[Edited by author: Niny Khor on 19 Mar 2007 08:14 PST: ps]

Niny Khor said:

Hey Christina - when are you thinking of starting?? :) My schedule next year is still up in the air, so you never know!

If the clearing hadn't turned out to be so darned expensive, we'd actually wanted to plant the first crop rotation this season (ie, NOW!) - planting will go on for another couple of weeks. If we had the money to clear tomorrow we'd be able to mobilize enough labor to plant right away from the Koch Goma camp not too far away. As things stand now, it looks like we'll have to wait for the next planting season (GRACE - do you know when the next season for planting starts?) I want to say August, but could be mistaken. I'm not the farmer in this venture :)

Was just thinking a bit about the farm this weekend, wanted to wait a bit since i think it's important to get the enthusiasm going first before others chime in with suggestions, as it often detracts from the vision of the project.

Alot of the time it's questions from thinking people that really help me focus the many roving thoughts in this scattershot brain of mine. That's why I started posting in this forum to begin with! These questions are perfectly helpful, niny - thank you!

Nonetheless, here are some of the first few things that investors might ask (beyond the selection)

1. How would you address the issue of whether this is child labor?

One of the traumas of the current situation in Northern Uganda is the loss of agricultural know-how and tradition. The Acholi were farmers. The land there is very rich and fertile, and the landholdings for every family were more than adequate in the old days. The children in the target group have now grown up without exposure to agricultural techniques and traditions, and have lost that family knowledge through the deaths of the elders in their families. In many cases, they do not know where their family land is and have nowhere to go when the the government enforces resettlement of the displaced peoples. And their educations have been horribly disrupted so a very high number are illiterate.

Giving these children a home on some land could really be their best hope for integrating back into the productive fabric of Acholi traditional culture over the long term. The objective is to bring them into a context where they can be trained by the local community in how to make the land work for them, and participate in other community learning activities, services and income generating activities as well. I also think we can structure it so that the children aren't actually working for a laborer's wage but for the crop value that's produced on their land (see below).

2. How do you ensure production sustainability? Farming sometimes take a few years to really take off - do the participatnts know farming and would they get into it? Do you have enough safeguards againts weather shocks?

I'm hoping for lots of learned input here on making the lines crisper in the following fuzzy vision of how this might work.

• First, we start commercial organic farming using adult farm labor available from nearby Koch Goma IDP camp. In it's day the farm employed hundreds of laborers who have been displaced to the camp and are still there. The farm is physically located in what is now called Amuru District - the entire district is nothing but rich black soil. The region used to be one of Uganda's most agriculturally productive regions. There were several large scale commercial farms in the area (including Opok Farms) that did pretty well until 1986.
• During the first 2-3 growing seasons we season the fields, develop/implement a crop rotation and field expansion plan, and build basic infrastructure for the child-family community

• 150 solar power/water equipped homes on 2 acre plots
• a community school
• a dispensary
• a Webbed Empowerment Center
• a community kitchen

• The plots are leased from the farm for each family (by someone? by the grassroots public?) for 10 years. The family inhabiting the plot sells 1.5 acres worth of production under contract to the farm and is encouraged to develop .5 acres for their own sufficiency.

• When the children move in they are matched with some adult laborers, who earn a small percentage of the crop value to help the family learn over time how to manage their fields on their own. No loss of employment when the kids are able to manage on their own because the farm is still expanding. Workers can be redeployed to other fields. When still more labor is needed to expand the farm, the older youth (above which age?) would have first shot at those wage-based jobs, over and above what they are able to earn on their own family fields.

• other community jobs would be available to the children. I LOVE thinking about David Braden's self-help corporation in this context. Already we know that childcare, cooking, laundry and farm-work (for example) are things everyone in the community will need. David's model suggests organizing these services within the community (ie, everyone is part of a team that offers a service to others) or even trading these services as individuals through a community currency.

• additional skills training and community learning would be available through the WE Center for the adult laborers and children alike. (These last two points have more to do with ensuring the sustainability of the individual families than ensuring the farming success - I think it's important for the children to learn to diversify their agricultural incomes so that they will always be prepared for the inevitable bad seasons that farmers occasionally experience all over the world.)

• dunno much about agricultural safeguards against weather shocks. I will have to consult farmer Norbert on that one.

  3. Do the kids 'graduate' from the program?

continued fuzziness on what might work

• part of the money the families earn selling their produce to the farm (ie, what they would otherwise pay to lease the land themselves) could be placed in an interest bearing trust fund. At the end of the 10 years, each family could choose to renew their lease at Opok Farms or cash out with a sum that will help purchase their own plot of land elsewhere. (Reminder to self - make sure they are bankable by then so that these savings can be leveraged through bank-loans if necessary)

  That said, your hunch to pursue steady demand from steady buyers is probably key.

Without knowing that's there, I honestly don't know that we'd be so ready to try. Thanks again for the focusing questions Niny - now the question is... do these answers make any kind of sense? What do we need to re-think - think about in addition to what's here?

[Edited by author: Christina Jordan on 20 Mar 2007 10:47 PST: fixed some formatting]

Christina said:

# other community jobs would be available to the children. I LOVE thinking about David Braden's self-help corporation in this context. Already we know that childcare, cooking, laundry and farm-work (for example) are things everyone in the community will need. David's model suggests organizing these services within the community (ie, everyone is part of a team that offers a service to others) or even trading these services as individuals through a community currency.

The self-help corporation would give you an option to subdividing into 2 acre plots - in which each family takes the full risk of crop failure on their individual plots. One scenario would be having the SHC own the land (and the SHC is owned by the people who have contributed labor, etc.). Those farming could lease the land for a percentage of the crop or the SHC could issue shares for the labor to plant and harvest. Either way, the food would be available to the community as a whole in exchange for shares they have earned and the risk of crop failure on any one plot is spread through the community. It might also make sense to build the homes in one or more concentrated locations - rather than spreading them out across the land.

I am curious whether it is feasible to clear portions of the land by hand - rather than with expensive equipment?

Could you start now by raising animals on the land by harvesting what is growing there now?

Have you heard of permaculture techniques? That would be an alternative to monocroping on that portion of the land that would be devoted to food for the community as opposed to that portion of the land devoted to export crops.

Great project! I'll go read the rest of the comments now.

[Edited by author: David Braden on 20 Mar 2007 08:20 PST: correct error]

I googled "permaculture in africa" and got 142 hits including one in Mbale, Uganda.

And another of those 142 hits was this relating to SOLID's support of permaculture projects in Lesotho.

Though since Meron is setting out for Africa this week she may well have other things on her mind right now.

David Braden said:

Christina said:

One scenario would be having the SHC own the land (and the SHC is owned by the people who have contributed labor, etc.). Those farming could lease the land for a percentage of the crop or the SHC could issue shares for the labor to plant and harvest.

The land is family owned and there's no discussion about any change in ownership whatsoever. Family land is sacred to the Acholi, and in designing this the private family's need to earn income from the land has to be respected. I believe we can do that while at the same time providing a place for the child-families to finish growing up in a nurturing community environment.

now meandering... It may well be that many of the families want to stay on after the initial 10 years. That will be possible but I also don't want to keep them tied there. I'd want them to have options (though not requirements) as they grow older for stepping out into the world if they want to. I guess I think of it more like a partnership between the community and the landowners, where the community has the ability to use the land to develop their sustainable living skills, potentials and community initiatives. The structured part of the bond between the individual families and the community needs to be a flexible one that allows kids to grow up and leave the roost. The relationship between the community and the landowners basically boils down to some kind of tenancy, I think.

It might also make sense to build the homes in one or more concentrated locations - rather than spreading them out across the land.

Ya know, I suggested that initially too, and was scoffed at for even suggesting it! The Acholi need their land, I was told. The main complaint about the IDP camp condition is that people have to live in such close proximity to each other. That's just not their culture. They like big pieces of land. In some Ugandan cultures, it's cows that have the highest value as an asset; for the Acholi, it's family land. This is why I think there may be some families who will want the option of being able to have help buying their own land after a period of time, but I could be wrong on that.

I am curious whether it is feasible to clear portions of the land by hand - rather than with expensive equipment?

Originally we'd thought so but there are 20 year old trees growing. The locals say at the very least they would need power tools, and there is no power there. (I'm uploading some pix to flickr now to post later on.)

Could you start now by raising animals on the land by harvesting what is growing there now?

That's an idea we've tossed around. But the area is not yet very repopulated at all. If we were to mobilize a workforce for clearing we'd have to arrange daily transport in from the IDP camp which is just over 20k away. Sending one person out to tend a few animals is a different kind of labor equation that would really depend more on finding the right person.

Have you heard of permaculture techniques?

I love the principles of permaculture I just read about. Thanks for that. Followed a link to the Permaculture Institute - they have a permaculture design course that sounds like a perfect fit with Norbert's interests. hmmm.

Interesting.

So the corporation could issue shares to the landowners for rent and the landowners could use the shares to pay for labor on that portion of the land the owners will use for their own account and/or use their shares to buy goods and services from the corporation.

Gas chain saws might be an option?

One of the principles of permaculture is to interplant species in a seven layer (I think), from soil to tree top, combination. Depending on the tree species and what uses can be made of them, leaving a number of the trees may make sense in the permaculture section.

It sounds like a beautiful piece of ground - I look forward to the pictures.

David Bale said:

And another of those 142 hits was this relating to SOLID's support of permaculture projects in Lesotho.

Hmmm - just maybe a visit to lesotho could be a better idea than a course in the states...