  
TechnoServe
is an international development organization founded in 1968.
They provide technical and management assistance to community-based
enterprises, such as cooperatives, farmers' associations and
savings and credit associations, which are owned by groups of
rural people throughout Africa, Latin America and Poland. These,
in turn, help farmers to grow more food while generating new
jobs and increasing income among those in the community.This
leads to improved health and nutrition, greater access to education,
better living conditions and stronger local economies, without
creating long-term dependence on outside assistance. Here are
a few success stories:
- In Nronga, Tanzania, TechnoServe
teaches villagers how to increase their profits by producing
and marketing "mala" -- a popular yogurt-like cultured
milk -- instead of over-abundant fresh milk. With their profits,
the villagers have been able to hire trucks to deliver the mala
milk to market. No longer do their children have to carry heavy
buckets of fresh milk from their rural dairy farms in the hills
to the village market. In addition, TechnoServe has taught the
villagers how to keep basic books for their business and to coordinate
their market deliveries.
- In Tapezco, Costa Rica, the
local cooperative, Coopagrimar, opened a vegetable processing
plant with the help of TechnoServe. Seeing the potential of the
local farmers to produce export quality produce, TechnoServe
worked with the cooperative to establish a plant that prepares
and freezes vegetables. They provided members with the training
to run it properly and gave local farmers agricultural training
to ensure that they could grow the quality produce that exporters
expect. The opening of the plant at Coopagrimar has been life
transforming for Grace Gonzalez and her family. Grace works as
a broccoli floret cutter, and her work has provided her with
a steady income. Her husband, a farmer, has a guaranteed buyer
for his vegetables. Grace and her husband have been able to eat
better, make their home more sturdy with bricks, and buy the
things their children need for school. Grace is equally grateful
that she has health care insurance through her work, a lifesaving
benefit that no one in her family has ever had before.
- With the help of TechnoServe,
a group of corn farmers in Ghana learned how to obtain a much
higher price for their crop by using a delayed-sale marketing
technique. Members of the group were encouraged to put a portion
of their corn into storage at harvest time, when prices were
low, and sell it when prices rose later in the year. To cover
household expenses in the interim, the cooperative lent its members
a percentage of the harvest-time price, using the corn as collateral.
To keep this collateral intact, TechoServe showed the group how
to treat and store the corn properly so it would not spoil. After
the first year of using this technique, group members made more
profits than ever before -- receiving up to 100 percent greater
returns for their corn than their neighbors who did not participate.
The members even used some of their earnings to improve their
community by grading their town's dirt access road.
Contact: TechnoServe, 49 Day Street,
Norwalk, CT 06854; Phone: 203-852-0377 or 1-800-999-6757; Email:
technoserve@tns.org;
Internet: www.technoserve.org
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