ORGANISATION

The Vi Agroforestry Programme is a Swedish Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) with Head Office in Stockholm. The programme runs seven projects around Lake Victoria, two in Kenya, one in Uganda and three in Tanzania and one in Rwanda. Today we are working with around 150.000 families, i.e. more than 1 million people. We have a vision and ambition to assist many more. Around 30-40 million people live in Lake Victoria basin.  

The Vi Agroforestry Projects are registered as NGO's in respective country. Over 30.000 private annual donors financially support the Programme. We also get annual allotments from Sida (Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency) and the Swedish Cooperative movement.   The base in the project organisation is the Areas of Concentrations (A.o.C.), consisting of 300-350 farm households. This size is deliberately chosen to make it possible for one extensionist to interact with all households within the A.o.C. The extensionist lives in his/her A.o.C. 15 to 20 A.o.C's are organised into one zone, managed by a Zone Manager responsible for co-ordination and follow-up. Today each project has 100-150 A.o.C's in 7-8 zones reaching 30.000-50.000 farmers.

As support to the field staff, each project has the following units:

• Training and Community Empowerment Unit, with the main aim to, in collaboration with the Zone Manager, identify and address training needs among the field staff.

• Seed Unit, with the task to purchase, store and distribute quality seeds of requested species to the extensionists.

• Agroforestry Demonstration Centre (ADC) (except in Mwanza), with the aim to demonstrate a variety of Agroforestry practices to show target farmers, local leaders, other NGO's, schools and a general public the potential of agroforestry.

• Monitoring and Evaluation Unit

• Administration Unit.

The Foundation Vi Plant Trees started in 1983 with a cry in the magazine 'Vi' to help stop the spread of the desert in Africa. We now have over 20 years of experience. During this time we have assisted a lot of small-scale farmers and rehabilitated large areas of degraded land, but also learned a lot, from them and from others. Vi Agroforestry Programme is the collective name for our four projects in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda and the head office in Sweden. Your gift will go directly to poor farmers in Africa.

Every year, small-scale farmers grow over ten million trees in agroforestry and land rehabilitation systems. This is done to prevent soil erosion, produce fuel-wood, timber, and fruits, to generate income and to improve the environment, i.e. to improve livelihood - for this generation and the coming ones. In an external evaluation of our work, financed by Sida, the consultants stated "None of the members of the assessment team have come across a bilateral project capable of producing similar results at such low cost." Since then (year 2000) we have improved further and become even more efficient. Direct contact with the farmers, knowledge and the power of trees makes Vi Agroforestry an extremely effective development project.

One tree costs 20 Swedish kronor. The trees are given as gifts for Christmas, birthdays, exams and weddings, or as memorials to departed friends and family. Direct gifts are of course always welcome.

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