BUVAD's Sunflower Growing Project in Kayunga Uganda

With your donations the BUVAD Sunflower project to "revitalize the under developed communities' purchasing power with female gender as a key entry point in households of Kayunga District in Uganda", can be a success. Donations can be made directly through our fiscal sponsor paypal account at http://cican-pdx.org/contribute.html

One of the goals of BUVAD a Non Profit operational in Kayunga Uganda (E.A) is to empower community members through cultivation of sunflower seed for oil, as opposed to the increasingly unprofitable but culturally popular coffee crop. Coffee has become unprofitable in Uganda for a variety of reasons, including disease, climate change and international competition. For this reason BUVAD has turned to alternatives encouraging diversification of crops among Ugandan farmers. Unlike coffee, Sunflower is a two season crop. A bi-annual harvest means a stabilization of income and softening the detriment of a bad season. Sunflower can be mix-cropped allowing the growing of other crops like; maize, sweet potatoes, g.nuts, for personal consumption or commercial sales. Sunflower seed can be consumed personally or can be sold. Also, the rest of the plant can be used as animal feed. Sunflower seed also produces high quality oil for profit maximization. The biggest obstacle to the success of this new sunflower crop has been lack of knowledge and information among the farmers. One of the ways BUVAD is combating this is by begining regular growing workshops where farmer groups can come and discuss successes and challenges they have faced with their fellow farmer groups and knowledgeable members of BUVAD. 50 farmer groups are so far targeted . An essential part of these workshops is the encouragement of the female participation in particular. As the carers of the family, BUVAD believes that women will be the important agents of economic enrichment through sunflower cultivation. Central to BUVAD's goals is the Sunflower garden at St. Michael's Bwetyaaba Primary School one of the pioneer farms. The purpose of this garden is to educate children on how to grow sunflower and how to make money from the crop. The students in the focal areas grow and harvest the seeds, BUVAD buys the produce from them and the students can use the money to buy lunch and school supplies that they otherwise may have gone without. BUVAD short term goals include; ensuring that our pioneer farmer groups achieve the best yeilds they can and securing a market for their produce. At BUVAD we anticipate that we will be able to purchase the produce from the farmers directly and sell to farm supply shops on their behalf or process the produce into cooking oil and other products. BUVAD is currently seeking funding to establish an oil processing plant. This will not only maximise profits from the sunflower plant but will also provide employment for other members of the community. Upon this bakground we welcome your donations towards the success of this project. These can be made directly through our paypal fiscal sponsor via the link: http://cican-pdx.org/contribute.html Considering its health compettitveness, sunflower oil is very high quality oil as there is no gum in the oil. This means it is desirable for use as salad dressing and cooking oil without need for further refinement. BUVAD sunflower seeds will be cold pressed (processed without use of chemicals) which makes it even more desirable. BUVAD will coordinate processing and sale of oil. Seeds will be bought from farmers at a price just under the final sale price of the processed oil, so that BUVAD can make a small profit to maintain and expand the organization, and also continue our charity projects, while the farmers are earning well above the market price for their seeds. The risk of secuirng a market is taken on by BUVAD and not the farmers: they will have guaranteed favourable market in form of BUVAD. As such farmers can concetrate on growing successful crops and BUVAD can ensure they recieve maximum profits with minimized risks. We look forward to your support, the future success and expansion of our organization, and the empoweremnt this project will bring to the members of the Ugandan community.