Today's cover photo is yet another field being managed by one of the 7,000+ growers currently being trained through the ZIAP/S2S training partnership. I love how proud they are of these very "Iowa looking" corn fields.
We sent February funds over this month. The dollar has lost around 20% to the Zambian kwacha this year. That is in less than 45 days. Again, our hope is this is ultimately a good thing for our brothers and sisters in Zambia. But from an S2S standpoint, it is really causing me some stress. This is the second time in eight months that our recurring monthly donors reached a level that made me really feel comfortable, only to have the rug pulled out from under us and our expected monthly outflows increase unexpectedly. I know it's just part of the equation for any effort like this. I'm just being real with you all.
These field pictures are a reminder that the growing season will end soon, and it will be HARVEST time. I'm hoping some of you have been considering how you might play a part in our HARVEST effort this year. Whenever that time comes, our plan will be to:
1) Purchase as much as possible from the 442 growers to whom we provided inputs.
2) Purchase additional amounts, if necessary, from other growers local to our feeding partners throughout the country.
3) If we still have more funding and need to look beyond these, we will look outside our partner communities into surrounding communities.
For each of these growers, we will pay them just slightly higher than the government would otherwise pay them, hoping to add another small boost to these rural brothers and sisters' lives. Then we will transport the maize from the grower fields to the church storage facilities to replace the inventory used over the preceding twelve months.
4) If we have still more funding, we have several communities on a WAIT LIST, eager to become partners in this effort.
We have set aside so far $17,000 for the upcoming harvest effort. We will need multiples of that amount in order to purchase the maize we would like to purchase, so if you are considering a contribution for this effort, we look forward to hearing from you. And thank you. Same if you have been thinking about joining our ever-growing group of recurring monthly donors. Both the HARVEST group and the RECURRING group - somewhere between 40 and 50 American households today - are truly making an ongoing difference in the lives of our brothers and sisters in Zambia. With an average cost of $5 PER Zambian household PER month, a recurring donation of $100 per month impacts TWENTY families every month. Similarly, a one-time donation of $6,000 impacts ONE HUNDRED Zambian families for the following twelve months. One of the aspects of this work that I find so exciting is the EFFICIENCY of the effort. None of your donations stay in America. It all goes right to Zambia and makes a difference every single month.
Again, thank you so much for being a part of this with us!
