The Sustainable Village Initiative

IDPCS's proposal for a project in Ghana.

Welcome my friends, I want to tell you about a little initiative! Its called the Sustainable Village or the SVI.

The SVI mission is very simple, individual young adults from around the world identify basic human needs…Then they use their business skills to help satisfy those needs by setting up sustainable businesses for the poorest of the poor in Africa, effectively empowering these targeted people and guaranteeing them a stable income.

We implemented the SVI in the village of Chiok Along Yeri in the Upper East Region of Ghana with a population of 600 people. After the critical needs and wants assessment and talking to the people, we now know that Chiok Alonga Yeri needs two things: drinking water and a capability of doing dry season farming.

The village already has two hand dug wells both around 20 feet deep which both dry up by the end of March. When the wells do dry out the villagers go to a nearby pond 30 minutes away…which also dries out very quickly. And then they end up sharing this pond with their sheep, goats, cows and donkeys. It takes months until the wells replenish themselves. In other words it was a constant struggle for the people until the SVI showed up.

To satisfy the first need we have successfully drilled a borehole for the community supplying fresh drinking water to everyone.

This is a huge success especially how SVI Water is run by two elected women from two different families which guarantees them a stable income.

But still this doesn't solve the majority of the problems in the village (which is water and farming). From October to April (dry-season) the village of 600 people sit around and kill time until the rains return in April. That is almost 6 months of people waiting until the wet season doing absolutely nothing.

They are all farmers and inconsistent farming really does affect their livelihoods.

Therefore we need a possibility for the villagers to do dry season farming to grow tomatoes, pepper, garden egg, or onions in the dry season. This will ensure that everyone in the village is employed. This is why it is essential to solar mechanize the well. We require a mechanization so that we can ensure an adequate rush of water for the irrigation project we have planned.

We already have a professional agriculturalist on the team with international experience in Ghana and he volunteered to help. His name is Michael and he actually hosted me during my stay in Ghana. And he even took me around one of his project sites and showed what can be done. He also went with me to the village to test the soil fertility and do a quick orientation. He said the place is perfect.

Everything we do is sustainable and we will place in mechanisms for this amount to be repaid over time. Please look at our website for the social enterprise business models we have implemented for our other projects. This will ensure that the lives of 600 people will change forever. Through our sustainability measures this will ensure that we will keep replicating this process and spreading it from one village to the next using the same investment.

This is why I ask you to support the organization, support the cause, support the ideas, support the mindset, support the revolution by investing in SVI Farming, so that we can solar mechanize this well. Our values that we pass on, ensure that the SVI is solely based on community, hope, optimism, dynamism, and change. And this can only be continued and expanded by you.