FIELD OF HOPE INC

At Field of Hope, we aim to develop capacity and knowledge in agriculture so that families can be food secure and farmers produce high enough yields to have a profitable and viable enterprise. We do so through training and education of secondary agriculture teachers, smallholder farmers, and industry leaders. Our trainings and training materials (e.g. an innovative teacher's guide for secondary teachers that promotes hands-on learning) go above and beyond the basic agriscience ideals and include lessons on business and small-enterprise finance, budgeting, business management, leadership development, group work and collaboration and more.

We will provide agronomy and farm economic and budgeting education to smallholder farmers, both men and women, through training, demonstration, outreach, mentoring, and hands-on assistance.
We will develop these agriculturalists to make innovative, appropriate and sustainable decisions through critical thinking, problem solving, and scientific reasoning.
We plan to increase sustainable agricultural production using such tools as drip irrigation and mechanization, when appropriate.
We will provide mechanization technical training on tractors and attachments, when appropriate.
We will provide orphan care organizations with agricultural life skills education for secondary students.
We will assist in funding drip irrigation student gardens for orphan care centers.
We will partner with interested NGO's in providing ongoing training to the communities they serve.
We are partnering with professional training developers to update the current agricultural curriculum to encourage more critical thinking skills and less rote memorization.
We are encouraging university students with an interest in international agriculture to serve as interns/fellows.

We have a well established and educated staff made of development professionals and local agricultural and programatic experts.
Our Board Members bring experience in working in agriculture and training.
We are working with professional training designers Vivayic to develop appropriate instructional materials.
We work with several NGO partners in Uganda to connect with areas of great need.
We are able to draw upon workplace associates, with their deep knowledge and experience in agriculture and mechanization, as a pool of volunteers.

In our early years, we established a microfinance fund that allowed a local organization to purchase tractors and offer plowing services to smallholder farmers.
We have had several successful training sessions with smallholder farmers, widows and other women farmers, and secondary students.
We've established drip gardens for orphan care centers. These gardens serve as practice gardens for the secondary students in the ag classes, and they also supply produce for the orphan care center kitchens.
We have learned much in our first few years of existence, and the most important lesson learned is that progress in Africa is not steady or rapid. One of our projects, a tank stand and solar pump, required a rebuild and modifications before it was of benefit to the community and the drip irrigation garden.
We are growing our programs slowly and with respect for the culture, allowing our local partners to take the lead. It is not our intent to manage a perfectly-executed agricultural program, but rather to walk alongside our partners at a pace they help develop. Otherwise, it would become “our" program and the progress would likely end when we board the plane to come home.
We have recently established an Academic Ambassadors leadership program for high school agriculture teachers who are learning to teach the new curriculum.