Dear EA, please be the reason people like me will actually see a better world. Help me make some small stride on extreme poverty where I live—by the end of 2024.
This message is for everyone in the global EA community.
For all the things that have been said about EA over the recent past—from SBF to Wytham Abbey to my own article on EA in 2022 (I have a disclaimer about this at the very bottom of this message) -- I am asking the global EA community to help me make only one small stride on extreme poverty where I live, before 2024 ends.
Let’s make up for all the things that have been said about EA (e.g. that EA doesn’t support poor people-led grassroots orgs in the global south), by at least supporting only one poor people-led grassroots org in a part of the world where poverty is simply rife.
Be the reason people like us will actually see a better world, and the reason for people like us to actually see EA as being the true purveyor of the most good.
FYI:
I come from a community that purely depends on agriculture for survival. For this reason, the things that count as producing the most good in the eyes of people like me, are things like reliable markets for our produce. This is where I am asking for your help.
About me:
My name is Anthony, a farmer here in eastern Uganda. My own life hasn’t been very easy. But looking at people’s circumstances where I live, I decided not to sit back.
Some clue:
Before COVID came, the World Bank said (in 2019), that 70% of the extreme poor in Sub Saharan Africa were packed in only 10 countries. Uganda was among those ten countries. Even among those 10 countries, according to the World Bank, Uganda still had the sluggishiest (i.e., the slowest) poverty reduction rate overall, as shown in this graph.
Even in Uganda:
Eastern Uganda, where I live, is Uganda’s most impoverished, per all official reports. Our region Busoga meanwhile, which has long been the poorest in eastern Uganda, has since 2017 doubled as the poorest not just in eastern Uganda, but also in Uganda as a whole.
In 2023, The Monitor, a Ugandan local daily, said: “Busoga is the sub-region with most people living in a complete poverty cycle followed by Bukedea and Karamoja. This is according to findings released in 2021/2022 by Mr Vincent Fred Senono, the Principal Statistician and head of analysis at the Uganda Bureau of Statistics”.
Even in Busoga itself, our two neighboring districts Kamuli & Buyende, being the furthermost, remotest area of Busoga on the shores of Lake Kyoga, have the least economic activity, and are arguably Busoga’s most destitute.
In short, while Uganda as a country is the very last in Sub Saharan Africa in terms of poverty reduction, our region Busoga is the worst in Uganda, and even in Busoga, our 2 twin districts Kamuli & Buyende, being the remotest, are simply the most miserable.
Help us see some good before 2024 ends:
I am asking the global EA community to help the Uganda Community Farm (the UCF), a nonprofit social enterprise that was founded by me, to accomplish only two goals before 2024 ends. Please be the reason people like us will actually see a better world.
Goal one: Size of Long Island.
That’s, expanding the UCF’s current white sorghum project to cover every village in Kamuli & Buyende — a 3,300 sq km region the size of Long Island (New York).
Since 2019, the UCF has trained many rural farmers in Kamuli & Buyende, in eastern Uganda, on white sorghum. Our goal right now, is to expand this work and cover every village in Kamuli & Buyende, with white sorghum. Kamuli & Buyende are two neighboring districts in Busoga, Uganda’s most impoverished region.
To expand our sorghum project and cover every village in Kamuli & Buyende, all that we need is the postharvest handling and storage capability to handle our farmers’ produce on such a scale. Specifically, all that we are asking of you is to help us install a grain cleaning, drying and storage facility that shall both enhance our postharvest handling capacity, while linking our farmers’ produce with many reputable buyers.
Impact:
This facility will not only help with postharvest handling, or in building market linkages, but also, it will even help in making our overall work with rural farmers self-sustaining.
Currently, the UCF provides all our farmers with free initial inputs (seed, tarpaulins, and others), because many can’t afford them. This facility will change this by making many big buyers to view us as strategic partners, enabling our farmers to get better prices. This will give these farmers the self-motivation to produce more, and in turn, the ability to use their own incomes to secure the needed inputs, making our work self-sustaining.
The presence of this facility will also in itself be an assurance to all local farmers of the presence of a ready market (including those farmers whom the UCF hasn’t been supporting directly), giving them the self-urge to secure the needed inputs on their own — catalyzing our goal of covering every village in Kamuli/Buyende with white sorghum.
Let’s get this facility in place before 2024 ends:
This facility will be installed by British firm Alvan Blanch, at a total cost of GBP 339,403 (see detailed Quote). If you have the means to cover this entire cost on our behalf, so Alvan Blanch can simply come to Uganda and install this facility for us, you can do so by sending that money directly to Alvan Blanch. Our contact people at Alvan Blanch who put together the above Quote are Ivan Erimu, James Shaw and Christabel Blanch.
Other ways you can help are: creating a GoFundMe to help us raise part of the needed support, or by contributing via any of the methods on our Support Us page (including employee workplace giving). I will update this post once we raise the needed support.
For detailed information about Size of Long Island; local people’s circumstances in our region; our purpose of installing a grain facility, or why we are aiming to expand our white sorghum work to cover every village in the first place, please go to this page.
Goal two: 12 for 100% ADMIN self sufficiency.
That’s, multiplying production on the UCF’s 12 acre premises using irrigation and a little bit of permaculture, to ensure that 100% of our administrative overheads are met by us.
The ability to expand our work with rural poor farmers, and to operate with continuity, depends on our ability to cover our administrative costs on a sustained basis. However, like any other small African nonprofit, the UCF simply has no reliable source of support.
Currently, nearly ALL the support that we use to run our work comes from small online donations. And as said earlier, most of this money is spent on inputs (seed, tarpaulins, pesticides, fertilizers, spray pumps etc) that the UCF provides to all our target farmers totally free, only as a hand-up. But the day-to-day costs of running this work are huge.
And now, with our new goal of expanding our sorghum project to cover every village in Kamuli & Buyende, a region the size of Long Island, our overheads will be even higher. Help us put the UCF’s 12-acre premises to maximum use, using a combination of irrigation and permaculture approaches, to ensure that 100% of our overheads are covered by the UCF itself, i.e., from the income on our 12 acres.
Impact:
With 100% overhead self-sufficiency, we will be able to expand our work to new rural communities anytime, operate with continuity, and spend 100% of the money that we raise from our charitable supporters on inputs for those farmers who need a hand-up.
To achieve 100% overhead self-sufficiency, all we need is year-round production on our 12 acres using irrigation, and putting each available space on our 12 acres to use by integrating an array of crops and livestock using permaculture approaches — including a chicken forest. Needed support: $99,680. A detailed breakdown is available here.
My disclaimer on effective altruism:
Two years ago, I wrote a critique of EA. However, the reason I did so, isn’t because I somehow dislike EA as a movement, no. As someone who lives in a very impoverished part of the world, I only wrote this because I believe, given EA’s mission of doing the most good, EA was meant to be a very close, easily accessible ally of the world’s poor—and their local grassroots orgs—since traditional philanthropy has long kept the world’s poor on the sidelines. EA was supposed to be the world’s poor’s friend in need.
But, by asking all EAs to only support a few, all western charities that are recommended by GiveWell, The Life You can Save, Giving What We Can etc, it means, counting on EA’s support to escape poverty, if you live in a place like ours, is simply impossible.
These are the only reasons I wrote a critique of EA, because, given EA’s mission, I believe EA was supposed to be a very close ally of the world’s poor and their local grassroots orgs (in a way traditional philanthropy has failed to). It isn’t that I somehow dislike EA as a movement, no. To be honest, being more unreachable to the world’s poor in a way that even transcends traditional philanthropy, isn’t really the way to do good better.
Please give the world’s poor a reason to contrast EA from everyone else in the global antipoverty space, and a reason for people like us to actually view EA as being the true purveyors of the most good. Again, at least help me accomplish the two goals mentioned above, before 2024 ends.
Dear EA, please be the reason people like me will actually see a better world. Help me make some small stride on extreme poverty where I live—by the end of 2024.
This message is for everyone in the global EA community.
For all the things that have been said about EA over the recent past—from SBF to Wytham Abbey to my own article on EA in 2022 (I have a disclaimer about this at the very bottom of this message) -- I am asking the global EA community to help me make only one small stride on extreme poverty where I live, before 2024 ends.
Let’s make up for all the things that have been said about EA (e.g. that EA doesn’t support poor people-led grassroots orgs in the global south), by at least supporting only one poor people-led grassroots org in a part of the world where poverty is simply rife.
Be the reason people like us will actually see a better world, and the reason for people like us to actually see EA as being the true purveyor of the most good.
FYI:
I come from a community that purely depends on agriculture for survival. For this reason, the things that count as producing the most good in the eyes of people like me, are things like reliable markets for our produce. This is where I am asking for your help.
About me:
My name is Anthony, a farmer here in eastern Uganda. My own life hasn’t been very easy. But looking at people’s circumstances where I live, I decided not to sit back.
Some clue:
Before COVID came, the World Bank said (in 2019), that 70% of the extreme poor in Sub Saharan Africa were packed in only 10 countries. Uganda was among those ten countries. Even among those 10 countries, according to the World Bank, Uganda still had the sluggishiest (i.e., the slowest) poverty reduction rate overall, as shown in this graph.
Even in Uganda:
Eastern Uganda, where I live, is Uganda’s most impoverished, per all official reports. Our region Busoga meanwhile, which has long been the poorest in eastern Uganda, has since 2017 doubled as the poorest not just in eastern Uganda, but also in Uganda as a whole.
In 2023, The Monitor, a Ugandan local daily, said: “Busoga is the sub-region with most people living in a complete poverty cycle followed by Bukedea and Karamoja. This is according to findings released in 2021/2022 by Mr Vincent Fred Senono, the Principal Statistician and head of analysis at the Uganda Bureau of Statistics”.
Even in Busoga itself, our two neighboring districts Kamuli & Buyende, being the furthermost, remotest area of Busoga on the shores of Lake Kyoga, have the least economic activity, and are arguably Busoga’s most destitute.
In short, while Uganda as a country is the very last in Sub Saharan Africa in terms of poverty reduction, our region Busoga is the worst in Uganda, and even in Busoga, our 2 twin districts Kamuli & Buyende, being the remotest, are simply the most miserable.
Help us see some good before 2024 ends:
I am asking the global EA community to help the Uganda Community Farm (the UCF), a nonprofit social enterprise that was founded by me, to accomplish only two goals before 2024 ends. Please be the reason people like us will actually see a better world.
Goal one: Size of Long Island.
That’s, expanding the UCF’s current white sorghum project to cover every village in Kamuli & Buyende — a 3,300 sq km region the size of Long Island (New York).
Since 2019, the UCF has trained many rural farmers in Kamuli & Buyende, in eastern Uganda, on white sorghum. Our goal right now, is to expand this work and cover every village in Kamuli & Buyende, with white sorghum. Kamuli & Buyende are two neighboring districts in Busoga, Uganda’s most impoverished region.
To expand our sorghum project and cover every village in Kamuli & Buyende, all that we need is the postharvest handling and storage capability to handle our farmers’ produce on such a scale. Specifically, all that we are asking of you is to help us install a grain cleaning, drying and storage facility that shall both enhance our postharvest handling capacity, while linking our farmers’ produce with many reputable buyers.
Impact:
This facility will not only help with postharvest handling, or in building market linkages, but also, it will even help in making our overall work with rural farmers self-sustaining.
Currently, the UCF provides all our farmers with free initial inputs (seed, tarpaulins, and others), because many can’t afford them. This facility will change this by making many big buyers to view us as strategic partners, enabling our farmers to get better prices. This will give these farmers the self-motivation to produce more, and in turn, the ability to use their own incomes to secure the needed inputs, making our work self-sustaining.
The presence of this facility will also in itself be an assurance to all local farmers of the presence of a ready market (including those farmers whom the UCF hasn’t been supporting directly), giving them the self-urge to secure the needed inputs on their own — catalyzing our goal of covering every village in Kamuli/Buyende with white sorghum.
Let’s get this facility in place before 2024 ends:
This facility will be installed by British firm Alvan Blanch, at a total cost of GBP 339,403 (see detailed Quote). If you have the means to cover this entire cost on our behalf, so Alvan Blanch can simply come to Uganda and install this facility for us, you can do so by sending that money directly to Alvan Blanch. Our contact people at Alvan Blanch who put together the above Quote are Ivan Erimu, James Shaw and Christabel Blanch.
Other ways you can help are: creating a GoFundMe to help us raise part of the needed support, or by contributing via any of the methods on our Support Us page (including employee workplace giving). I will update this post once we raise the needed support.
For detailed information about Size of Long Island; local people’s circumstances in our region; our purpose of installing a grain facility, or why we are aiming to expand our white sorghum work to cover every village in the first place, please go to this page.
Goal two: 12 for 100% ADMIN self sufficiency.
That’s, multiplying production on the UCF’s 12 acre premises using irrigation and a little bit of permaculture, to ensure that 100% of our administrative overheads are met by us.
The ability to expand our work with rural poor farmers, and to operate with continuity, depends on our ability to cover our administrative costs on a sustained basis. However, like any other small African nonprofit, the UCF simply has no reliable source of support.
Currently, nearly ALL the support that we use to run our work comes from small online donations. And as said earlier, most of this money is spent on inputs (seed, tarpaulins, pesticides, fertilizers, spray pumps etc) that the UCF provides to all our target farmers totally free, only as a hand-up. But the day-to-day costs of running this work are huge.
And now, with our new goal of expanding our sorghum project to cover every village in Kamuli & Buyende, a region the size of Long Island, our overheads will be even higher. Help us put the UCF’s 12-acre premises to maximum use, using a combination of irrigation and permaculture approaches, to ensure that 100% of our overheads are covered by the UCF itself, i.e., from the income on our 12 acres.
Impact:
With 100% overhead self-sufficiency, we will be able to expand our work to new rural communities anytime, operate with continuity, and spend 100% of the money that we raise from our charitable supporters on inputs for those farmers who need a hand-up.
To achieve 100% overhead self-sufficiency, all we need is year-round production on our 12 acres using irrigation, and putting each available space on our 12 acres to use by integrating an array of crops and livestock using permaculture approaches — including a chicken forest. Needed support: $99,680. A detailed breakdown is available here.
My disclaimer on effective altruism:
Two years ago, I wrote a critique of EA. However, the reason I did so, isn’t because I somehow dislike EA as a movement, no. As someone who lives in a very impoverished part of the world, I only wrote this because I believe, given EA’s mission of doing the most good, EA was meant to be a very close, easily accessible ally of the world’s poor—and their local grassroots orgs—since traditional philanthropy has long kept the world’s poor on the sidelines. EA was supposed to be the world’s poor’s friend in need.
But, by asking all EAs to only support a few, all western charities that are recommended by GiveWell, The Life You can Save, Giving What We Can etc, it means, counting on EA’s support to escape poverty, if you live in a place like ours, is simply impossible.
These are the only reasons I wrote a critique of EA, because, given EA’s mission, I believe EA was supposed to be a very close ally of the world’s poor and their local grassroots orgs (in a way traditional philanthropy has failed to). It isn’t that I somehow dislike EA as a movement, no. To be honest, being more unreachable to the world’s poor in a way that even transcends traditional philanthropy, isn’t really the way to do good better.
Please give the world’s poor a reason to contrast EA from everyone else in the global antipoverty space, and a reason for people like us to actually view EA as being the true purveyors of the most good. Again, at least help me accomplish the two goals mentioned above, before 2024 ends.
Thank you.