Community Development

Food Security

We empower households and communities to participate in the global marketplace

while concurrently improving the health and nutrition of vulnerable individuals. We help them move beyond governmental or foreign assistance and strengthen their ability to cope during times of shock. Our activities improve crop production and post-harvest handling, ensure resiliency through diversification of income sources and promotion of savings, encourage collective operations and adoption of advanced farming methods, and improve household- and community-level health and nutrition. We also strengthen communities through natural resource management, education and skills development, and food aid to vulnerable populations or survivors of emergencies.

“This [ACDI/VOCA] training has changed me! I have acquired knowledge on constitution making, recordkeeping, savings and credit schemes, and with this my work with farmer groups will improve greatly.” — District government agricultural extension agent, Kibuku District, Uganda {

Food Security

App Streamlines Aid in Haiti.

ACDI/VOCA provides aid rations and guidance on health, nutrition, hygiene and sanitation to vulnerable citizens, particularly mothers and children, in Haiti’s Southeast Department through our USAID-funded Multi-Year Assistance Program. We also help farmers improve agricultural practices to grow more and better food to increase resiliency and self-sufficiency. But reaching and assisting rural Haitians is challenging, particularly in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake. Beneficiaries, distribution sites and clinics are usually in remote areas where roads are crumbling and electricity is sporadic. Until last year, we registered program participants and recorded data using paper forms, later transferring information to computers at our field offices. This method was time-consuming and sometimes led to long lines at distribution sites and gaps or mistakes in program data. In 2011 we began using a smartphone application developed in cooperation with students at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, through the Humanitarian Free and Open Software project. The Portable Open Search and Identification Tool, called POSIT, helps us ensure that malnourished beneficiaries in remote areas receive food rations, parents keep their well-child clinic appointments and program resources are properly tracked. POSIT has tailored forms that accommodate multiple languages and allow our teams to update records, register new beneficiaries and record changes in beneficiary status quickly and accurately on smartphones. The data is stored in the phones until there is cell reception, when it is sent by short message service (SMS) directly to a program server at our main office in Jacmel. By late 2011, we had registered 24,000 program beneficiaries through SMS using POSIT. Auditors for USAID’s Regional Inspector General for Haiti were impressed by how well the innovative tool streamlined food distributions and improved data collection. Most importantly, the app has allowed us to overcome formidable obstacles and improve our assistance to Haiti’s citizens.

Volunteer Program

ACDI/VOCA’s Volunteer Program places highly skilled U.S. professionals on short-term assignments to support our long-term systemic projects. In 2011, 220 volunteers worked on 2–4 week assignments in 18 countries, bringing our overall number of volunteer assignments since 1971 to 10,883. These volunteers bring their expertise, energy and goodwill to our work.

Climate-adaptation expert John Magistro is one such volunteer. In October 2011, through our Farmer-to-Farmer program, he travelled to Jamaica to conduct a climate change vulnerability and adaptation analysis for our USAID-funded Marketing and Agriculture for Jamaican Improved Competiveness (MAJIC) project. ACDI/VOCA implements MAJIC in partnership with Jamaica’s Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries to increase the productivity and competitiveness of crops—onion, Scotch bonnet pepper, cocoa, coffee, potato and others—that are important to Jamaica’s economy. As a small island nation set in the tropics, Jamaica is highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, including higher temperatures, irregular rainfall, more-frequent droughts, powerful storms and rising sea levels. These changes are making farming increasingly risky, especially for small farms, which make up over 80 percent of the country’s agriculture. Magistro’s assignment was to assess MAJIC project activities in the context of climate trends and to recommend coping strategies to reduce farmers’ vulnerability and increase their ability to adapt. He met with farmers, government representatives, researchers and other stakeholders, and prepared a report with practical and realistic recommendations for farmers and project implementers. USAID praised the report, one of the first vulnerability and adaptation analyses completed by a USAID partner. Magistro brought over 25 years of experience in climate variability, adaptation and agriculture to his assignment, and gave Jamaican smallholders a needed edge in the struggle against climate change. His work not only focused MAJIC project activities, but also informed our climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies in other countries.

Board of Directors

The individuals below play a key role in ACDI/VOCA’s governance and serve as invaluable links to the private sector, academia and the cooperative community.

CHAIRMAN mortimer H. Neufville Former Executive Vice President National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges Washington, D.C.

VICE CHAIRMAN Timothy J. Penny President and Chief Executive Officer Southern Minnesota Initiative Foundation Owatonna, Minnesota

AUDIT COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN Douglas graham Officer of Sponsor Relations Nationwide Columbus, Ohio

PROJECTS COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN r. Bruce Johnson Director Southern States Cooperative, Inc. Richmond, Virginia Deborah Atwood Executive Director of the Initiative on Food and Agriculture Policy Meridian Institute Washington, D.C.

Dr. gopal N. Saxena Director, Cooperative Development Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative, Ltd. New Delhi, India

Charles F. Conner President and Chief Executive Officer National Council of Farmer Cooperatives Washington, D.C.

Patricia garamendi Assistant General Manager, California State Fair Former Deputy Administrator for International Cooperation and Development Foreign Agricultural Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture Walnut Grove, California William H. Harris Director CoBank, ACB Greenwood Village, Colorado

Jim Hoyt Vice President, Strategic Planning and Corporate Services GROWMARK, Inc. Bloomington, Illinois

richard Owen Director CHS, Inc. Inver Grove Heights, Minnesota

Don Theuninck Vice President, Audit AgriBank, FCB St. Paul, Minnesota

Tom Verdoorn Vice President, International and Dairy Proteins Division Land O’Lakes Shoreview, Minnesota