:Title: Opok Farms: Sustainable living for child-headed households in Northern Uganda :Author: Christina :Date: Fri, 09 Mar 2007 03:54:22 PST :Modified: Mon, 12 Mar 2007 00:36:00 PST :URL: http://www.omidyar.net/user/u618296607/news/18/ By the time the Gulu conference ended, I was in meltdown mode. It had been a wonderful gathering. Intense highs - manic frenzies - intimate moments - disturbing frustrations... for me it had been 4 days of mental gymnastics. I was tired, and melting with the sun by the end of the last day. Finally sometime after dark, Norbert and I managed to get away from the WE Center. We went and sat in an empty field, stared at nothing, shared a beer... and hatched a plan. Not a little plan, but a big plan. I should have seen it coming, since it always seems like my flashes of ability to see really big tend to coincide with times in my life when I'm juggling many complex (and seemingly unrelated) issues at a go. But in fact I was surprised. At that point, I really didn't feel like I had much left in me! By the end of our discussion, Norbert and I were both revived. And excited. Significantly, I made a pledge to myself that night that this would be the first hairbrained idea of mine that I would not invest any of my *own* money in (there *are* people and organizations who I know will want to help), but that this will be the most important thing I've ever done. *I see that I can, so I must*. And the really wonderful thing is that Norbert sees it and is really excited about it too. "You go girl!" was what he said when I started to muse aloud about what a large piece of land *could* mean in social terms. The following basic text has been sent to a Dutch investor who is ready to buy and export all of the organic produce that Opok Farms can grow. He's now shopping it around to some organizations in Holland who he believes may have an interest in such a project. We're only in the pre-pre-beginning stages right now, but since Norbert's family owns the land in question (and they are keen to see it developed), it's also very real. I'm thinking self-help corporation, WE Center, solar everything, lots of bandwidth... wish us luck! I really think there is a lot of potential here to do something meaningful about a Northern Ugandan issue that needs some serious attention. Opok Farms ----------- **Sustainable Living for Child-Headed Households in Northern Uganda** Government policy in Northern Uganda currently encourages the return of Internally Displaced Peoples to family owned land, particularly in areas surrounding the region’s largest IDP camps. Among the many human complexities to consider in implementing this policy, is where the thousands of child-headed households should go. Opok Farms is a 3000 acre commercial organic farming development near Koch-Goma IDP Camp in Amuru District, that will offer employment, educational opportunities, and energy efficient homes for 150 child-headed families by 2010, and land-based employment for hundreds of agricultural laborers in nearby villages that are being reclaimed. As the first large-scale commercial farming endeavor to be restarted in the area, Opok Farms will demonstrate sustainable organic farming and solar drying techniques for producing crops that are valued at a premium in Uganda’s export markets. Two-acre parcels of crop rotating land will include a homestead to be inhabited by a child-headed household. A community Webbed Empowerment Center equipped with adequate bandwidth and solar powered computers will offer connectivity to the wider world, social support, recreation, education and vocational training to the community of children resident at Opok Farms. 600 acres of the land was previously cleared by the Ministry of Agriculture’s now defunct Bush Clearing unit in 1974-75, and planted in rotation through 1986 when commercial farming operations were disrupted by armed insurgency. The 20 year period has seen these areas return to forest, requiring mechanized clearing that is now only available in Northern Uganda through very expensive commercial services. An estimated $17500 will be required to re-clear half (300 acres) of the previously cleared fields using wheel loaders in 2007. A supply of seeds and a ready market for organic sim-sim, chilis, cotton and pineapple has already been identified; an additional $xxx will be required to finance tractor services, farm tools and agricultural labor through the end of the first growing season. Opok Farms will scale to 1500 planted acres by the end of 2010, with non-arable portions of the land devoted to alternative community income generating activities such as bee-keeping, poultry, dairy production and fish-farming. *All thoughts welcome* .piece C [**Edited by author:** `Christina Jordan`_ on 12 Mar 2007 00:36 PST: I added a whole paragraph )I should have...) and edited several typos, since I'd posted in a hurry and found upon re-reading that I'd not conveyed part of the story I wanted to convey to my friends in the Onet community] .. _`Christina Jordan`: http://www.omidyar.net/user/u618296607/