3 minute read
Letter from the Chairman
2019 was a significant year for The Gorta Group, as the organisation reached a record 380,000 households across our programmes, and implemented a total of 32 projects across nine core countries in the region. In total, our turnover for the year was €33.4m.
OUR SUBSIDIARIES extended our organisational reach even further, with Partner Africa’s ethical consultancy working with companies in over 40 countries, TruTrade sourcing from thousands of smallholders in East Africa for national and regional markets, and Traidlinks facilitating unique trade partnerships in the Great Lakes Region.
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Our core work remains focused on smallholder farmers, farmer associations, and African agri-business. In the agrienterprise sector we received the largest ever grant in the organisation’s long history – an award from the European Union of €26m to establish and deliver an agri-business Challenge Fund to support the growth and development of that sector in Zambia.
Over a five-year period, ENTERPRISE Zambia will provide investment funding to upwards of 40 businesses in the agri-business and aquaculture sectors in the southern African country, with the goal of creating thousands of new jobs in processing and production, and new markets for up to 150,000 smallholder farmers in Zambia.
As I write this introduction to our annual report, we are in the midst of the worst global health crisis in a century.
COVID-19 has claimed lives, damaged health and caused economic devastation across the globe, and it continues to pose a grave threat to the fabric of our societies. Our governments, health authorities, and so many others are helping us to navigate the challenges that have resulted from this pandemic. As we look to the future, much of the discourse has been around how we must adapt to a ‘new normal’. Our resilience and ability to meet the challenges posed by COVID-19 will ultimately determine how and when we recover from this crisis.
That is the case both in the western world, and in the countries where we are delivering programmes and supporting communities, in sub-Saharan Africa.
Like many other organisations in the non-profit sector, Self Help Africa is counting the economic costs of coronavirus. Many of our planned fundraising events and activities for 2020 – in Ireland, the UK and USA - have been cancelled, our network of charity shops closed for four months, as did most of our offices.
As the chairman of the Board of Directors, I am extremely grateful to all of our staff across the world for the manner in which they managed these challenges. Our workforce has adapted to working remotely, while they have also shown enormous goodwill and cooperation in accepting wage cuts and shortened working hours, during the pandemic. For this, and for the support from suppliers, from donors, and from other quarters, we are extremely grateful.
I would like to acknowledge the tremendous contribution Tom Kirley made to the organisation and extend our deepest sympathies to his family on his passing in May 2020. Tom played a pivotal role in Gorta over many years as a sub committee and Board member and also as interim CEO. He was part of the team that brought Gorta and Self Help Africa together and the organisation has gone from strength to strength as a result. His commitment to supporting the eradication of poverty in Africa and doing the right thing, no matter how challenging, has been a huge part of our collective success. We will miss him dearly.
We watched the spread of COVID-19 with trepidation, and were acutely aware too of the potential that this deadly virus had to cause devastation in sub-Saharan Africa, should it take hold.
We are fortunate that Self Help Africa emerged from 2019 in a strong position, both programmatically and financially. In this, my last year as Chairman, I want to say how grateful I am to my colleagues on our Board for the support they have provided to me, and for the important oversight that they have given to the organisation and its work, over the last number of years. A mid-term evaluation of our current five-year strategic plan, ‘Embracing Change’ that was carried out in 2019 has allowed us to focus anew on our mission.
It will give us new confidence and determination that we can meet the challenges and achieve our targets in the years ahead.
