Vision of SACRED Africa
Empowered
communities that are food secure with improved incomes in a well-conserved
environment.
Mission Statement
To
build a better Africa by facilitating
increased and sustainable agricultural production, food security and incomes
while conserving the environment.
Core Values
- SACRED Africa believes that one of the most
successful and lasting strategies of stemming poverty and famine in Africa
is enabling people to manage their natural resources more efficiently,
produce more food and earn income to support their families.
- SACRED Africa further believes that achieving a sustainable balance between the
need for food and income and environmental quality is the most effective
approach towards improving living standards of the rural farmers in
Africa, and ensuring resources for the future, committed to achieving
long-term success not short-term solutions.
- There are no simple quick fix solutions for
complex problems that are ravaging Africa.
The solutions are found in combined Participatory Community Development
(PCD) and Sustainable Agriculture (SA) as well as helping the farmers to
market their produce.
- This organization beliefs that to help people
attain the skills that are needed to shape and improve their future,
SACRED Africa needs to work with those
selfsame people in a genuine and true partnership.
- We are committed and dedicated to serving
communities to enable them improve their livelihoods and attain social
sustainability.
- We believe that smallholder farmers possess
important Indigenous Technical Knowledge (ITK) and skills, but also need
modern innovative technologies to solve some of their problems.
- We are committed to lobbying and advocacy
work on policies and legislation that will ensure food security, increased
incomes and environmental conservation.
- We are committed to promoting functional
collaboration and networking among all stakeholders involved in
participatory and adaptive on-farm research and farmer-to-farmer extension
learning as viable approaches in sustainable agriculture. Besides, all
that stakeholders require is to share development experiences, problems,
challenges and breakthroughs.
- We are committed to ensuring capacity
building of our human resource base and financial stability with
accountable and transparent policies, procedures and systems of governance
as well as effective resource management.
- We are a non-partisan, non-profit making and
non-religious community focused organization serving the priority felt
needs of diverse communities without any discrimination on the basis of
gender, ethnicity and nationality.
This NGO believes that the potential
solutions to the above problems lie with the smallholder farmers who are
basically resource poor. The fact that they are resource poor does not mean
that they are ignorant. These categories of farmers possess lots of experience
and coping mechanisms that only require facilitative empowerment in order for
them to realize their own inherent potential. All that is needed to be done is
for the potential of the farmers to be ignited, period.
On Research
and Extension
- To
establish training, extension and research partnerships with organizations
providing complementary skills, facilities and contacts.
- To improve the productivity and performance
of crops and livestock in sustainable and integrated production systems,
which seek to conserve and enhance the environment
On Community
Empowerment and Capacity
Building
- To
empower rural agricultural communities to take a lead in solving their own
problems through capacity building in technical skills, leadership and
group dynamics.
- To
promote the conservation of agricultural biodiversity through the creation
of awareness and environmental education and facilitating of community
actions.
- To
facilitate capacity building for rural Community Based Organizations and
indigenous NGOs in order to enable them play more active roles of
catalyzing the development of their communities.
On Best Agricultural
Practices
- To
facilitate value-adding and home-based processing of agricultural produce
in order to increase their value, prolong their storage and improve their
marketing.
- To
promote meaningful and mutually rewarding exchange programs and interactive
learning between researchers, development workers and agricultural
communities.
On
Institutional Strengthening and Development
- To
develop SACRED Africa into a leading
institution of excellence in sustainable agricultural research, training
and development in Sub-Saharan Africa.
- To
build, strengthen and enhance the capacities of SACRED Africa’s
core resources and services in order to improve the efficiency and
effectiveness in service delivery.
On Lobbying
and Advocacy
- To
proactively influence positive and enabling environments for undertaking
agricultural policy changes that will support and ensure the
sustainability and profitability of farming enterprises.
On Poverty
Alleviation
- To make a
succinct contribution towards poverty alleviation through collaboratively
building and strengthening the productive capacities of farming
communities and enabling them to access socially and economically
acceptable markets for their produce.
For more details contact the Director, SACRED Africa at sacred@africaonline.co.ke (c) 2009 SACRED Africa
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