Because of YWAM Mercy’s involvement, one Ba Vi community has learned to focus first on investing in people, rather than infrastructure. YWAM Mercy has been working here on-and-off for the past 20 years and recently local leaders asked us to help them assess their current needs and the results showed that the location would benefit from the introduction of organic farming.
After assessing their current needs, collecting and analysing data for more than a month, YWAM Mercy staff held two meetings in mid-August with local leaders to share the results. Following this, all of the leaders in attendance agreed to pursue organic farming as their next development effort. These leaders have benefitted from training YWAM Mercy has provided over the years which helped them to understand and contribute to the assessment process and to quickly come to a decision.
The local partner will contribute 40% of the funds needed for the project with YWAM Mercy securing the other 60% of the funds from their donor partners.
About 200 local farmers will directly benefit from the effort over the next two years and another 2000 local households are expected to benefit indirectly. Discussions with farmers showed their enthusiasm for organic farming and their willingness to change their habits which often include overuse of pesticides and chemical fertilizers. They see that market trends demand clean, safe produce and they are excited to be able to provide this to consumers as soon as possible.
