CRED partner FIAM have 3 main income generation programmes to help them move towards sustainability and away from total reliance on external donors. One of these is the goat project. Another is St Joseph’s school. And the third income generator that FIAM has set up is their compost business. A generous landowner had some farm buildings that he no longer wanted to use, and these buildings had a bunch of very long compost making troughs in them. FIAM now rents the buildings at a low cost and has set up an organic compost business. They employ a cooperative of 10 families, and between them, these families collect buffalo and cow manure from neighbouring areas (and trust me, there are a lot of cows and buffalo in this area, so that’s a lot of manure available!), bring it to the site, load it into the troughs, water the manure, add the worms, and generally tend to it for a month until ready to sell. The manure is really good quality stuff, is much liked by the farmers (especially those who are working big fields of crops) and it fetches a very good rate. The families get a good and reliable salary from the work, and all the profit goes towards the cost of some of the other FIAM projects.
Talking of income generation schemes, one other project of FIAM that is going well is the small business programme. This programme is a bit more ad-hoc but still very effective, and is essentially a micro-loan scheme whereby FIAM gives seed money as appropriate to help a family start a new business or boost an existing one. In so doing, the family, who will have been identified by church and community leaders as suitable for a loan will be enabled to climb out of a precarious financial situation. Sometimes the new business is to help grow a tiny little endeavour into something that makes money – eg progress from selling a few home-grown products at the side of the road, to having a handcart that allows them to reach more customers. Sometimes the new business replaces a previous form of income generation that failed through no fault of their own. This is often the case with farming, and the seed money can help the farmer begin a new line of farming so that not all the focus is on one endeavour. Once the small business is bringing in some income, the family start making contributions to repay the loan, and so replenish the pot to allow another family to be helped. So far in this way, FIAM have supported 276 families, and all are now in a much better financial place than they were.