Projects
Module 1:
Savings and Loans
Improving Livelihoods Through Savings and Loans
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Small-scale farmers need a range of financial tools to cover the cost of agricultural production, to meet regular expenses like school fees, to respond to emergencies like illness and to finance life events like weddings and funerals. The Savings and Loans project helps individuals and groups to organize themselves, for instance in saving and credit groups, and assists them to link up with diverse supportive arrangements such as micro-insurance, community funds, mutual health organizations, rural health insurance, revolving drug funds and church-based groups. Through its innovative Mobile Village Academy, KV-HELP provides hands-on-training, online coaching and practical support to individuals and groups to improve the financial management of their livelihood activities.
Module 2:
Healthy Chicken
Improving Livelihoods Through Healthy Chicken
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Many small-scale farmers keep local chicken that have a nice taste but grow slowly, produce few eggs, often die from common chicken diseases and compete with factory-farmed chicken. The Healthy Chicken project gives individuals and groups access to dual purpose chicken like SASSO and to knowledge and skills to properly keep, process and market these birds. This will empower families and communities to improve their nutrition, generate income and contribute to meeting the increasing local, regional and national demand for eggs and meat from healthy chicken. Through its innovative Mobile Village Academy, KV-HELP conducts awareness and communication actions, provides hands-on-training and offers practical support to individuals and groups in moving towards organic chicken farming.
Magic Soil
Improving Livelihoods Through Composting
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The Magic Soil project centers on producing and popularizing compost as organic soil amendment product. Composting enables small-scale farmers to reduce the expensive and inappropriate use of chemical fertilizers that pollute the environment and human health. Unused organic waste from households, chicken rearing and crops like beans is turned into compost to improve the quality of agricultural soils. By improving the water-holding capacity, health and fertility of the soils, compost can lead to better crop yields, greater food security, and increased resilience to weather extremes like drought, heat waves and heavy rains. Through its unique Mobile Village Academy, KV-HELP creates awareness, conducts communication actions, provides on-side-training and offers practical support to individuals and groups in with an interest in producing and using compost.
Beans Is Best
Improving Livelihoods Through Bean Cultivation
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In Tanzania, common beans are a healthy and environment-friendly staple food and cash crop, but increasingly seen as inferior food for the poor and schools, as middle-income earners now prefer eating meat. It is hardly known that the protein content in beans can reach up to 40%, whereas the protein content of meat is only about 20%. Farmers can easily grow beans on small pieces of land, especially if compost is added. Beans enrich soils with nitrogen and thus fit into crop rotations or can be successfully intercropped with plants like maize or cassava. Through its unique Mobile Village Academy, KV-HELP advocates for organic bean farming and consumption, provides hands-on-training and offers practical support to individuals and groups.
Module 3:
Why organic?
Improving Livelihoods Through Organic Agriculture
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Most small-scale farmers have not yet heard of organic agriculture. Organic agriculture is a set of low-cost practices that seek to sustain agricultural yields while conserving nature and protecting the health of the farmers and consumers. Farmers can learn to optimize the growing conditions of crops by enhancing the natural fertility of the soil to ensure good nutrient and water supply, creating diverse cropping systems and promoting natural enemies of pests, recycling organic materials and manures and using natural inputs while renouncing chemical pesticides and fertilizers. Through its unique Mobile Village Academy, KV-HELP promotes organic agriculture, offers training sessions at demonstration plots and organizes awareness campaigns.
