Rounding Out 2021: Highlights from Our Partners

Categorized as: About us, Africa, Education, Girls & women, Grantee, Job Creation, Latin America, Leadership, Our Partners, Poverty Alleviation, Stories, U.S. on December 18, 2021. Related Grantees: Bean Voyage, Embrace Her, Preserve International, KadAfrica, Idea4Africa, Tech Me.

Editor’s Note: As the year is coming to an end, we wanted to take a few minutes to highlight some of our partners’ work. Everyone has worked so hard this year and we wanted to honor that. Read on to hear about some of the amazing accomplishments SFF partners have accomplished in 2021!

By Sally Skees-Helly, Director and CFO

Catalyst Partners

Bean Voyage: Costa Rica (and soon, beyond!)

Bean Voyage finished the recruitment of over 220 smallholder women coffee producers for their 2021 Care Training program. This year the training focused on Climate Change Adaptation and Women in Community. They finalized contracts for the sale of eleven tons of green coffee to partners in Canada, Germany, Europe, USA, and Korea. Additionally, they are finalizing a grant to incorporate training and grants for the implementation of farm-level diversification techniques including beekeeping, hen-keeping, and home gardens.

Bean Voyage continues to expand their existing programs and are creating new programs including gender equity, continuously finding new sources of collaboration and funding. 

A Bean Voyage workshop

Finally, for the past year, Bean Voyage has worked with five smallholder women coffee farmers to develop technical filmmaking and storytelling skills. They have spent hours experimenting with camcorders, scripts, interviewing family members, and thinking about what coffee means to them. The Helly Family Grant was given to this project to help with post-production costs and we featured the project on a recent Seeds of Hope blog. You can watch the trailer here.

Idea4Africa: Rwanda, Uganda, and now, Liberia!

Idea4Africa’s entrepreneurship workshops are ongoing with a limited number of people per session due to the pandemic. They are seeing an influx of people needing guidance on how to rebuild their small businesses and seeing more women joining the classes. This September they graduated 100 participants (with business plans), eighty percent of whom were women.

They were also recently nominated to lead the local community-based organizations in Nakivale, the largest refugee camp in the southern part of Uganda, which gave  them the opportunity to reach even more communities.

Idea4Africa recently shared their Activity Report from September. They’ve implemented several new programs outlined below.

Kigali Business Tour: This program was developed to address the lack of exposure to and understanding of entrepreneurship. The program has two parts. The first is a mini-workshop where participants are introduced to a basic understanding of entrepreneurship, and also invite entrepreneur speakers to share their journeys and answer questions. The second is a field trip where participants meet innovative entrepreneurs in their work environment and are inspired by their stories.

Mini Workshop Kigali Business Tour

Umugandathon Project: This project is a collaboration between Love and Hands and Idea4Africa Rwanda. This project combines Asset Based Community Development and Design Thinking. The program will run through one high school, one Polytechnic and one university and will reach 300 students.

From Ideas2Action Series: This is a series of video tutorials that provide the same basic principles covered in their guidebooks. These are being offered in several languages and the hope is they will be able to share them on multiple platforms.

On a very exciting note, they have also added a country director in Liberia! We look forward to watching them grow.

KadAfrica: Uganda

KadAfrica started new programs in refugee settlements. The programs, planned to start last year, were kickstarted this year and so far  KadAfrica has done three cohorts in refugee settlements. They also adjusted their curriculum to meet the needs of their clients. Mental health became a serious issue for people enclosed in small spaces, especially women. KadAfrica planned a mental health curriculum to be launched next year. 

Finally, on November 25th, KadAfrica began participating in a social media campaign called 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence, highlighting facts about global gender-based violence in conjunction with the United Nations International Day to End Violence Against Women.

An example of one of their social media campaign posts

Seed Partners

Embrace Her: Zambia

Embrace Her has grown impressively, with their programs expanding from 12 to 40! They also secured an office space, hired a full-time program intern, and received an award from the Bank of Zambia for Financial Literacy! They have adjusted their programs significantly to meet the needs of their clients during the pandemic, and it has clearly been a success! You can read more about Embrace Her’s programs and successes on our Seeds of Hope blogs from July and December.

Friday Market Visits

Preserve International: Northern Uganda

As the pandemic continues to spread in Uganda, Preserve International supports the groups they have been working with and helping farmers overcome the challenges they face. One group is the Hope Women’s Farm Group who are working hard to have a productive harvest where nothing goes to waste.

Hope Women’s Farm Group courtesy of Embrace Her Facebook page.

Preserve held its biggest fundraiser of the year on October 28th with fajitas and margaritas at the Locavore in Fort Worth, Texas. 

Check out this three minute video below hosted by Operations Manager Betty Konga that gives a great overview of what Preserve has been up to, and what’s in store.

TechMe: Nigeria

In mid-August, Tech ME completed its evaluation of the last Women ICTpreneurs digital skills training program. The evaluation showed that 71% of attendees now have a job or own a business. If you haven’t had a chance to read our blog on TechMe, you can find it here.

Trainees from Tech Me’s Women ICTpreneurs Nigeria digital skills program

Tech ME also shifted focus from self-employment to training women for tech-sector jobs this year, with a high graduation and employment rate: 120 women were trained, 116 fully graduated, and 70 percent have found some kind of employment. 

All photographs courtesy of our amazing partners.

LEARN more about all of our nonprofit partners here.

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