By Mallory GafasContributing Writer
When Andrew Youn, a Kellogg School of Management alumnus, traveled to Kenya during a summer internship in 2005, he saw many situations “where mothers struggled to keep their children alive and hunger caused devastation to their families.”
It was then that he knew that he had to find some way to improve the No. 1 health problem in Africa – starvation – the cause of more than half of all childhood deaths.
Upon returning to Kellogg, Youn worked on developing a project to help alleviate hunger in Kenya.
With the help of Kellogg Professor Barry Merkin, Youn formed the One Acre Fund, a unique model where Kenyan farmers can raise themselves out of severe poverty when provided with the proper materials.
“Handouts won’t solve a thing unless you’re ready to feed millions of people every year,” Youn said in an interview with the Echoing Green Foundation. “The only way to make a real difference is to somehow empower the poor to solve their own problems and do this in a way that can impact a lot of people.”
Youn said he named the project the One Acre Fund because each family involved is allotted one acre of land to farm. Seeing that 75 percent of the Kenyan economy is based on farming, Youn knew that he could make a significant difference in food output for the whole country by helping poor farmers increase their own individual crop yield, he said.
“The goal here is self-sustenance,” said Bhavan Suri, a board member of the One Acre Fund. “The combination of teaching new farming techniques, providing some of the start-up materials, connecting people with markets and having the civilians pay back part of what was given to them generates a learned self-sufficiency on many levels.”
Encouraging the idea of self-sustenance, the fund asks farmers to pay back part of what is lent to them.
“We do not mandate that anyone pay anything back,” Suri, a Kenyan native, said. “But because of the strong honor system that exists among many of the civilians there, we have not needed to.”
Suri said the organization “expected collection rates of around 70 percent” but that almost 98 percent of what was lent out has been repaid.
Although young, One Acre Fund has seen success in Kenya. The first summer harvest returned a farm yield which had improved by more than 400 percent, said Matthew Forti, a member of the U.S. Board Chair for One Acre Fund.
“Plus, the response of civilians there has been great,” Suri said. “It’s really been such a (boost) to the people and they are so grateful.”
So far, the fund consists of 110 Kenyan families, Suri said. But Youn’s goal is to have 5,000 families in the program by 2011. Within three years, Youn and his team hope to increase farmer income by 300 percent, cut in half the devastatingly high 1/6 child mortality rate and reduce the child-growth stunt rate by half.
“Our only limitation for growth is our fundraising,” Forti said. “We have pretty aggressive goals, but I know that we can make them happen if enough people take an interest.”
Youn, who is presently on a two-year fellowship awarded by Echoing Green, is working personally with the civilians and field officers in Kenya.
“Andrew is willing to sacrifice a six-figure salary in America to go down and do this work,” Forti said. “It says a lot about who he is as a person and I know with someone like that working on this project, it just can’t fail.”
Reach Mallory Gafas at [email protected].
