YAP Proposal #283: Food for All Ghana and SDG2 Farms (Elijah Addo, Ghana)

Chef Elijah Amoo Addo is my name and I am a 25-year-old Ghanaian social entrepreneur from Akuapim-Mampong in the Eastern Region. Growing up as an orphan, my passion of creating a means of nutrition for vulnerable children led me to found the Food for All Ghana Program and SDG 2 Farms.

In December, 2015 I registered and conceived SDG 2 Farms, a livestock and crop startup dedicated to achieving the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Goal 2: End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture. I donates 30% of produce and funds from the farm to compliment the Food for All Ghana vision of creating sustainable means of nutrition for Ghanaians.

Approximately 30% of residents within southern Ghana qualify for assistance from Food for All Ghana.  Our client base is low-income people, mainly charity homes and deprived communities, who need emergency help to put food on the table.  60% of those served by the program are children.

UNICEF Ghana estimated that the number of children who need services from the Food for All Ghana program keeps increasing, revealing in an October 2015 study that one out of every four children in some regions of Ghana are going to bed hungry.

Accra and the urban cities in southern Ghana are growing and a number of new families are entering the area to look for employment opportunities and a better life.  It’s been challenging for government to control migration within this areas which have given rise to development of slums and vulnerable communities.

The Food for All Ghana Program is an important resource because we can respond quickly with the one of the most important resources these beneficiaries need: food!

The Food for All Ghana Program is a food recovery organization that creates a sustainable means of nutrition for vulnerable children, elderly and mentally challenged people in Ghana through food recovery, farming and an efficient forum for stakeholders within the food supply chain.

My quest of building West Africa’s first food bank in Ghana began in the year 2012 when I came into contact with a mentally challenged man who recovers leftover food from street vendors to feed his colleagues on the streets of Accra. My vision is to end hunger and food wastage along the food supply chain in Africa by creating sustainable means of nutrition.

SDG 2 Farms is a community-based farm that produces eggs, poultry and vegetables and sells them at affordable prices. We donate 30% of produce and profits from the Farm to the Food for All Ghana program.

As part of SDG 2 Farm’s contribution to creating sustainable means of nutrition, we will every year identify and support some of our beneficiary communities, including orphanages, with a livestock farm that they will manage to provide protein to compliment the donated food products.

SDG 2 Farms will be located within beneficiary communities that receive recovered food products from the program. Proceeds and produce from the farm will compliment the Food for All Ghana program.

In February 2016 we harvested Gh¢ 25,400 worth of food products to feed and inspire 2400 vulnerable people including children (65%), the elderly (15%) and the mentally challenged (20%).

We expanded our partnerships by collaborating with community-based agencies and NGO’s to donate recovered food products to the Teshie North School Feeding Program and to advocate for the National School Feeding program to be expanded to include JHS students.

The $5000 grant, if won by the Food for All Ghana Program, will be used to put up the first poultry farm and a 2.5-hectare maize and vegetable farm.

We measure our success through milestones we set to achieve in the program. The milestone for SDG 2 farms is the setup of the poultry farm with 200 boxes and 2.5 hectare maize and vegetables farm.

The budget for the $5000 grant is as follows:

-Buy building materials including wood, blocks, nails, roofing – $350
-Clear land for vegetation – $65
-Seedlings and poultry chicks – $3200
-Feed and fertilizers – $800
-T&T/Miscellaneous -$585

 

Blogpost and picture submitted by Elijah Addo (Akuapim-Mampong, Ghana) – sdg2.farms[at]gmail.com

The content, structure and grammar is at the discretion of the author only.

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This post is published as proposal #283 of “YAP” – our “Youth Agripreneur Project”.

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