It’s that time of year again! The holiday season is upon us. Which means lots of pushing and shoving at the mall, trying to find the perfect gifts for people that already have much of what they need.
This holiday season, why not consider a slightly different kind of gift? Rural Development Connections has a range of charitable gifts to offer, where every dollar you spend in your loved one’s name goes directly to needy Kenyan farmers. We’ll send you a card containing a picture of the gift and you can give that straight to your loved one. Click here to browse gifts!
You can choose to plant a tree, which will help reintroduce biodiversity and strengthen the soil, or buy a family’s share of a community well so they have clean water to drink and with which to irrigate their land. You could select new tools such as a wheelbarrow, hoe, machete or others to help make them more efficient farmers. Or you could purchase drip irrigation for a smallholder farmer, much cheaper than regular irrigation techniques, but just as effective. Buy a donkey to help a farming family transport fertilizer and crops (not at the same time obviously). There is also an option to buy local organic certification or fair trade certification to help farmers get more money for the crops they harvest. Or finally our favorite – enough cow dung to fertilize a farm for four months. This is particularly needed by the farmers as years of deforestation and poor agricultural policy have left the soil weak.
All of these items are desperately needed by the farmers in the Rural Development Connections program, which aims to provide them with the tools and the knowledge to sell their crops on the global market and move themselves higher up the value chain.
Unlike many charitable gift schemes, Rural Development Connections can guarantee that every single penny spent will go towards the gift selected. No admin fees, no siphoning off here or there, and no putting it into a larger pot for us to decide later how it is best spent. That means that if you want to buy a donkey in your best friend’s name, then a donkey is what will be purchased.
This cuts to the heart of our commitment to being Safi at all times – Safi means honest and transparent in Swahili.
The only time we do reserve the right to reallocate funds is if orders are received for an excessive amount of one particular type of gift. For example, if we receive orders for 700 donkeys and there is only a need for say, 60, we will fill the need first and then use the remaining funds to purchase the other much needed items. We hope this is understandable.
Thank you for considering a Rural Development Connections Out of the Box gift, and happy holidays!!
The Rural Development Connections team.
P.S. For more information on Rural Development Connections, the Coffee Connections project, or Safi Coffee, please see the following links:
www.coffeeconnect.org
www.ruraldevelopmentconnect.org
www.saficoffee.com
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