What are We up to?

Organics for Orphans: Our Hope for their Future
Organics For Orphans, a Hope for the Nations and Love mercy program, is targeting two issues endemic in Africa: the impoverishment of farmers and the homelessness of millions of orphans.
Africa is the only continent where food production per capita has fallen in the last four decades. Other continents have tripled their outputs. Many Africans eke out a living on small plots, relying on unsustainable methods for farming crops with low market value. Faced with declining productivity, small-scale farmers often abandon the land to swell the ranks of the extreme poor in urban slums.
There are an estimated 34 million orphans in Africa. Time and again, we see the neighbours and extended families of these orphans open their homes, even in the face of their own poverty.
Organics for Orphans supports the communities that support orphans, by creating the conditions for sustainable agriculture.
Together with our community partners, Organics for Orphans is taking a three-pronged approach:
1. Sharing leading-edge agricultural practices:
Organics for Orphans is connecting struggling African farmers with local experts in bio-intensive organic farming and natural cultivation methods. Using these proven techniques, small-scale farmers can yield multiple, high-quality harvests each year, superior to chemical-based produce.
2. Providing organic agricultural inputs:
Organics for Orphans enables small-scale farmers to access highly affordable, top quality organic fertilizer (http://www.rutuba.com/). We support water harvesting, conservation and provide assistance in drilling wells for community use. Farmers wishing to diversify their crops and shift to higher-value produce are provided with seeds and technologies to cultivate crops with greater market value.
The productive capital of a farm is its soil. Soil fertility makes the difference between a surplus and starvation. Organic fertilizer helps soil to more effectively hold water, reducing the need for irrigation, at a cost lower than chemical fertilizer, and without damaging the environment.
3. Connecting thriving communities with orphans:
All of the farmers participating in our program are supporting local orphans by “grafting” these children into their own families. We believe that generosity is contagious, and because we want to foster generosity towards orphans, we’re giving back to adoptive families by helping them to prosper.
The Organics For Orphans program is delivered through Hope for the Nations and Love Mercy by a volunteer team of professionals from the health and organic farming sectors with guidance from NGO advisers. These NGO experts have the experience in building healthy homes for orphans in over 20 nations.