We hope that it raises the profile of our work amongst radio enthusiasts across the world; indeed, Chris Longden’s article was instantly spotted by well-known, British ‘autistic blogger’, http://www.stuartvallantine.co.uk/  who, along being a die-hard radio fan, has also worked for the LYF as a volunteer in the past!

We have been delighted to receive emails of support from the magazine’s readers and will contribute more updates on our exciting, new developments with Farmer Radio. We are currently looking for ‘LYF Ambassadors’ to help us in our endeavours – so keep on checking into this website if you are interested! But as always – PLEASE consider donating to the LYF and perhaps raising money on our behalf!

With thanks to Radio User magazine and Chris Longden for reproduction of this article.

The post A Champion RADIO USER first appeared on Lorna Young Foundation.

Hannah with LYF’s partners in Uganda

Led by our partners, the University of Reading’s Walker Institute, this 16-month project aims to improve early warning systems in Uganda and to strengthen flood-prone communities by providing better access to information. Our contribution comes via the LYF’s proven Farmer Radio model, implemented through local NGO partner ECOTRUST in the pilot district of Katakwi, eastern region. Our radio programme content will promote good practice on flood prevention and adaptation for these remote communities.

As always, the radio side of the project will be developed with full participation of farmer listener groups and will combine science, livelihoods analysis and indigenous knowledge into key messages communicated by farmers for farmers on their local radio stations.

Unfortunately, climate change issues (flood, drought, landslides, hailstorms etc) now impact every sector of the Ugandan economy. Studies indicate that Uganda is already experiencing the negative impacts of climate variability; with flash floods, landslides and mudslides being increasingly common. Only last month, sudden intensive rainfall triggered a massive landslide in Bukalasi in eastern Uganda resulting in 46 fatalities and 33 injuries, destroying 186 households and affecting an estimated 1,116 people. Almost every district in the country is now subject to regular flooding, causing wide-spread disruption to people’s lives and livelihoods and destruction of houses and crops. The damage done to major infrastructures such as hospitals and sewage treatment units has the knock-on impact of endangering public health further.

Despite the establishment of a national response policy framework and institutions, current methods used to track and manage flood risk in Uganda are limited. The NIMFRU project brings together stakeholders from national and local government, NGOs, research institutions and advocacy networks. Together, we can pinpoint the exact vulnerabilities of communities – taking account of the different seasons, exposure to different types of flood threat and improving preparedness, communication and response. Katakwi was carefully selected as our pilot site due to its history of flood-related events. Between now and February 2020, the LYF will be working alongside our partners in the region, as together we test the new forecasting and response tools—including the all-important use of radio! After this, the partners will be delivering the evidence needed to scale up the project and to embed it within national policy and institutions.

Hannah Davis and Hannah Clark share the role of Farmer Radio Development Manager for the Lorna Young Foundation.

The post Floods, Uganda and Radio first appeared on Lorna Young Foundation.

Lorna Young

We were thrilled to be able to announce that the very person our Foundation was created in order to honour – Lorna Young – has been included in ‘The New Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Women.’

Lorna lived in Eskdaleuir and went to Langholm Academy, transferring to Lockerbie Academy for her last couple of years of high school. Those who grew up with her, got to know one of the Britain’s leading pioneers in the fledgling fair trade movement; here was a Scottish lass destined to have a big impact on issues of justice in the world.

Lorna was instrumental in getting the first ever fairly traded products onto British supermarket shelves. And believe us, back in the materialistic-mad 1980s and 90s, this was no mean feat…

In order to get her foot in the door, Lorna relied on a unique combination of her own warmth and wit, blended with commercial savviness and topped off with a steely determination to see a fairer deal for the world’s poorest smallholder families. Lorna made it happen.

The adjectives ‘inspirational’, ‘dynamic’ and ‘driven’ are overused these days when it comes to organisations trying to sell a personality to the public. We have never tried to market Lorna’s name and sometimes we have wondered whether we have been singing her praises highly enough. But we have always believed that her outstanding achievements – both as a Scottish woman and as a citizen striving for commercial justice and trading fairness – would simply win through, on their own merits.

To top all of this off, we are also pleased to be able to tell you that Scottish MP, Joan McAlpine has propsed a Motion in the Scottish Parliament to recognise the life and work of Lorna. We are all deeply grateful for this – and to the other SNP MSPs and the Labour MSP who has also backed the Motion. The Motion itself is at the foot of this news item.

We are delighted that Lorna’s best friends Isabelle Gow, Iain Black and Lorna’s parents, family and that Lockerbie Academy continue to tell the world about her work and beliefs.

And we thank the authors – Elizabeth Ewan, Rose Pipes, Jane Rendall, Sian Reynolds and the team at Edinburgh University Press, along with Joan McAlpine MSP, for honouring Lorna – and through her name – recognising the importance of supporting all poverty stricken smallholder producers across the world.

https://www.snpdumfries.org/mcalpine-welcomes-the-inclusion-of-dumfriesshire-pioneer/2018-11/

Book available at EUP – to get a discount – use the code NEW30 before the end of December 2018: https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-the-new-biographical-dictionary-of-scottish-women.html

The post Lorna’s Biographical Honour & A Parliamentary Motion first appeared on Lorna Young Foundation.

The LYF’s Cristina Talens recently travelled to Ghana, to record the first of our Farmer Radio programmes for the local communities with farmer field listening groups, set up to inform the radio content.

It will be up to the farmers to choose which of the programmes are most relevant to them to use at the relevant point of time in the agricultural calendar. This is so that the subjects remain relevant and are demand driven.

The subjects which they discussed were allocated seasonal schedules and the broad themes that they will be using, focus on Health, Sustainable Farming and Weather.

The subjects selected were:

– Burning vegetation – why to avoid this –  and the impact of slash and burn farming in the long term.

– Agrochemicals – why use, other options, what to spray and when and how to ensure personal protection

– How to retain healthy soil and moisture in the soil through the practices of conservation tillage, Contour ploughing and mulching

– The practice of crop rotation as a means to diversify and also increasing nutrients going into the ground

– How to harvest and store rice and other local crops such as maize and sorghum

#Ghana community sing to stop slash & burning of grasslands protect #biodiversity #WorldWildlifeDay #WWD2018 @WalkerInst @LornaYoungFound pic.twitter.com/EbpOg6qY6b

— Source ClimateCoffee (@SClimateCoffee) March 5, 2018

The post LYF Ghana Farmer Radio Field Training first appeared on Lorna Young Foundation.

We were inundated with exceptionally high quality applicants for our post of ‘Farmer Radio Development Manager’. This proved to be a very popular post – attracting some fantastic people with excellent experience. So, we faced a tough time indeed in terms of making a decision. And we would like to thank every single person who applied; no one enjoys the process of jumping through so many hoops and we appreciate the time and work involved by our applicants.

But after they had experienced several gruelling interviews, we came to the conclusion that two of the candidates ticked every single box for us. And both wowed us with their previous experience and obvious passion for what we do. Interestingly, they share the same first name; (perhaps following a bit of an LYF tradition – what with our Cris Talens and Chris Longden). It also turned out that both candidates actually knew each other already – and at one point had even lived together! Those of you who have followed the birth and growth of the LYF will be aware that we are a small charity who adopts a rather unconventional approach to what we do. Our programme delivery and achievements are proof of the pudding that daring to do things a little bit differently can deliver huge dividends for the farmers that we support.

So, after lots of thought and discussion, we decided to widen the post in terms of hours available and offered the job to both Hannah C and to Hannah D.

Hannah D and Hannah C with Ian Agnew

The two Hannah’s will be taking the lead on our flagship ‘Open Source’ Community Farmer Radio initiative. This is no mean feat – and our new colleagues have needed to hit the ground running. You will shortly be hearing more from them, what they are working on and how you can help the LYF to develop this fantastic new programme, empowering smallholders in Africa.
Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and on Facebook!

More on Open Source Community Farmer Radio
The Lorna Young Foundation is a charity that works to connect communities, enabling them to trade knowledge, products and ideas that will make their lives better. We do this by devising and running programmes that bring together the many disconnected societies that make up our World- both in the UK and internationally. We have a rich history, taking our name from fair trade pioneer Lorna Young who broke down doors to get Cafédirect into supermarkets.

Our work is based on a deep understanding of international trade justice issues. We have a long track record of solving supply chain challenges, and access to networks that can deliver expertise and support. Farmer Radio – one of our flagship programmes – uses radio and text messaging to reach millions of small-farmers in Africa (and, later Latin America and Asia) with the information they need to manage and market their crops effectively.

Our aim is to bring about change: change in the attitudes and systems that prevent communities across the globe from working together to improve their lives.

Our new ‘Open Source’ initiative will be a game-changer in empowering participatory farmer radio, which enables farmers to leverage more value out of supply chains and tackle challenges. To date, we have undertaken individual farmer radio projects across Africa, but we are now moving away from frontline delivery and are facilitating significant scale-up. We are making our Community Farmer Radio model available on an ‘open source’, free of charge basis to any organisation that can use it to build a better future for farmer communities in the developing world.

How YOU Can Help
Get in touch with us if you are able to offer support in the following ways:
• Offering funding and sponsorship to help us scale-up our ‘Open Source’ approach across African countries
• Suggesting partnership opportunities for the LYF (i.e. with businesses, institutions, governments, communities, NGOs)
• Giving support for business planning, communications materials, IT support for an online platform, technical roll-out, legal support for ‘Open Source’ approach

The post Open-Sourcing with Two Hannahs first appeared on Lorna Young Foundation.

We now want to dramatically scale-up this work; and we believe that the most effective and sustainable way to do this is to Open -Source it – make it freely available as a package, to any group or organisation that wants to set up a Farmer radio project. We intend to create a toolkit of resources, materials, guides and support, based on our 8 years’ experience of successfully delivering Farmer Radio.

You can download our Farmer Radio prospectus here. It tells you more about Farmer Radio, our plans to Open-Source it, and help we are looking for to create and promote the take-up of the Open-source approach. We’d love to hear from you. Why not get in touch to chat about Open Source Farmer Radio.

The post LYF To Open-Source its Farmer Radio Programmes first appeared on Lorna Young Foundation.

In June 2017, the Lorna Young Foundation travelled to Ghana and Burkina Faso to launch BRAVE’s radio extension programme. The aim is to improve the resilience of farming communities to droughts and lack of access to good quality water. Ultimately this impacts on both their health and livelihoods, through their ability to grow food crops and keep livestock.

The aim of our radio extension programme is to provide training and information to farming communities in drought affected areas North of Tamale (Ghana) and in the region in and around Reo (Burkina). The training will target 4 key areas to improve resilience and adaptation of these communities going forward by:

• improving access to ground water by promoting rain harvesting techniques, proper storage and conservation of water resources;
• improving crop yields, by providing information on drought resistant and early maturing crops in line with agricultural calendars;
• promoting sustainable land management practices which improve soil fertility and water retention on the farms, the use of organic pesticides and fertilisers as well as raising awareness on the impact of deforestation;
• improving health and nutrition by promoting high value crops such as orange fleshed potatoes (rich in Vitamin A) ensuring garden crops can be dried and conserved for periods when hunger commonly occurs and also ensuring there is information on prevention and treatment of water related diseases such as cholera.

LYF Farmer Radio Planning Workshop, Ghana

In Ghana, farmer representatives and agricultural extension staff from MOFA attended a two day workshop alongside CARE, IRC and radio partners from the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation – the radio station Ura – to identify the key messages that would be delivered to farmers throughout the year. The programmes have been initially titled as  ‘FARMER AND THE WATER’[1]

In Burkina Faso, the process was started with 24 with representatives from the Union des Groupements Feminin a grassroot organisation operating across 4 key farmer communities, Christian Aid and the extension organisation Reseau Marp. The radio programme there will be organised with Radio Sangue across all 4 regions targeted by the BRAVE programme.

The groups came together and have made a first attempt to identify the key issues that farmers need more information on throughout the year.  We have scheduled these programmes into an agricultural calendar and these now need to be reviewed with farming communities.

In October, the LYF will return to provide further training on setting up farmer listening groups. These groups will help to develop content, communicate best practice and ensure that the programmes are aired at times which have the potential for highest impact.

• [1] kpa’ad ne koum  in Kusaal (to be hosted for Tariganga and Akara by Kate for URA – GBC)
• Pukpaana ni Kuom in Mampruli (To be hosted for Samini and  Jawani districts by Osman Masahudu for URA – GBC)

The post The LYF launches Farmer Radio in Ghana first appeared on Lorna Young Foundation.

Over 500 million people in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) depend upon groundwater supplies. Within a generation, that will rise still further, close on to a billion.

Groundwater that lies under rock, gravel, sand or silt can be extracted using wells and can help farming communities who are generally dependent on rain for crops and livelihoods, to access water when there is no rain. Groundwater resources are considered more resilient to climate variability and currently the volumes of this water being used are generally small compared with the average amount of rain in some parts of Africa.

So groundwater can provide an important water resource to help adapt to changing climate and land use. However, in areas of Sub-Saharan Africa where rocks store a relatively small amount of water, during extended periods of low rainfall, groundwater supplies can fail. For this reason – together with an absence of historical record-keeping of borehole levels – it is unclear whether the planned development of groundwater resources to meet increases in demand is feasible in every part of sub-Saharan Africa.

This month sees the launch of the BRAVE2 project with Reading University, (Building Understanding of Climate Variability into the Planning of Groundwater Supplies from Low Storage Aquifers) The aim of the initiative is to improve our knowledge of groundwater availability and management in Ghana and Burkina Faso.

LYF has been tasked to work on the BRAVE project; engaging directly with rural smallholders in Bukina Faso as our local partners disseminate information that enables communities to use water in a sustainable way for future generations. The overarching aim of the project is to build the capacity of local people to manage groundwater (GW) resources in a sustainable and equitable manner, to build their livelihoods and to help 400,000 to become more resilient to drought, especially Ghanaian women and children.

LYF’s role in the dissemination campaign is to utilize our Farmer Radio approach – linking into Farm Radio International through AfClix, the Lorna Young Foundation, and Practical Action West Africa. The campaigns will aim to share the new evidence-based tools for water governance with local decision makers and regional policy makers.

The post Community Groundwater Resources in Ghana and Burkina Faso first appeared on Lorna Young Foundation.

We are all pretty familiar with the value of tea in our own lives (where indeed would polite society be without it?) But one of the aims of the Lorna Young Foundation is to support small tea farmers in developing countries to receive the true value of their crop.

One of the LYF’s most exciting, recent initiatives has been to develop ‘Farmer Radio’ – where we work with local smallholder organisations to produce radio programmes so that farmers can access crucial information about the particular crops they grow and to help support them to have objective and transparent information about the markets that they grow crops for. You can read more about our first Farmer Radio initiatives here. And, as always, with an LYF project, we’ve been keen to add value – so our Farmer Radio model not only provides information on crop quality and on markets, but also takes the opportunity to raise awareness about more sustainable farming practices, to improve food and nutrition and to raise awareness of HIV-Aids prevention.

The tea markets in East Africa are experiencing a slump due to an increased green leaf production; as a result, tea factories in Tanzania are struggling. Many smallholders do not fully understand the impact of this on prices, so it is now more important than ever to create clear information and communication channels between factories and growers.

Our Tanzanian farmer-radio project was created in response to these challenges. We work in Tanzinia with the RSTGA (Rungwe Smallholder Tea Growers Association), WATCO (Wakalima Tea Company) and TRIT (Tea Research Institute of Tanzania). The project was launched in March 2014 and, to date, has received training visits from LYF staff and local partners – including Joseph Macharia (our Kenyan Farmer Radio lead) and Jasmine Bakula (our DRC based lead.) Our excellent partner-advisors from Ringtons Tea Company, Waitrose and the Wood Foundation Africa have also supported project.

In order to replicate our successful approaches in Kenya and DRC, our team worked with two radio presenters from Tanzania’s ‘Kyela FM’ to produce training and content for 6 months’ of radio programmes. Farmer ‘listening’ groups were set up so that we could be provided with feedback on content, along with creating an SMS facility so that farmers could ‘text-in’ their questions for the show. The radio programme was named Chai ni Mali (the value of tea) and later on in 2015, Ian Agnew from the LYF undertook a follow-up visit in order to see how the project was progressing.

Some of the challenges facing the project have been the lack of transport available to the broadcasters for them to carry-out regular interviews from the farmers and more encouragement is now needed for the listeners to text in their questions to the radio station. However – the general outlook was extremely positive. Ian met with a group of farmers who belong to the project’s ‘listening group’ at Mpuguso village; all were highly enthusiastic about the broadcasts and keen to provide us with new ideas. They appreciated the current level of technical detail available on growing tea during the broadcasts, but requested wider information on development and on growing other crops. It was also felt that more women farmers should be interviewed in order to encourage other women in the region to improve their crop cultivation and interest in farming.

Following the success of the broadcasts, RSTGA have set up their own radio station ‘Chai FM’ which now broadcasts from a small studio at their offices in Tukuyu directly to 10,000 local smallholders but which also repeats the programmes and urges more farmers to provide feedback and content for future shows.

In our next blog post, we will share some exciting news about our new Farmer Radio project in Ghana!

CAN YOU HELP THE LYF TO CONSOLIDATE OUR WORK WITH FARMER RADIO IN TANZANIA? PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD ABOUT OUR WORK AND DONATE HERE.

The post Chai ni Mali – the Value of Tea first appeared on Lorna Young Foundation.

RSTGA Tea Farmers in training

In November 2014, Cristina Talens from the LYF in the UK and Jasmine Bakula, our fabulous radio presenter from the DRC travelled to Rungwe to record the first radio programmes of Chai Ni Mali – the latest LYF Farmer Radio venture. They were accompanied by Ringtons, the Wood Family Trust and Waitrose who wanted to see first hand  how how the project was developing.

For this project, Rungwe Smallholder Tea Growers Association (RSTGA) have partnered with Kyela FM,  one of  the most popular community radio stations in the region. The station was launched in 2010 as a grassroots community radio and is a designated partner of the BBC World Service for their coverage of local voting and elections. Kyela FM radio broadcasts from 5am to midnight with a potential audience of over 2 million in the 4 Tanzania regions of Mbeya, Iringa, Ruvuma, and the Northern part of Malawi where national radio and TV stations have limited reach.  The radio station’s aim is to inspire pastoral development in agriculture and in health outreach to the community. The station has set itself up as ‘the voice of the voiceless’ offering its microphone to marginalised communities including people living in poverty, women and children groups, disabled people, and people living with HIV/AIDS. UNESCO continues to support the station by building the capacities of Kyela’s radio journalists, so that they can produce radio programmes of greater relevance and interest to listeners. It is, therefore, an ideal outlet for the tea radio extension programme. Two wonderful Kyela FM radio presenters have been appointed to work with us, namely, Sophia Kayombo and Masoud Mauldi.

During the trip, the RSTGA  successfully organised the first farmer field  listening group with some 30 farmers from Mwakalele where the  radio presenters took their first questions about tea and markets. The farmers welcomed a radio programme for tea in which they would be protagonists and would get to ask all their questions. We also took the opportunity to interview Linda Lisser from Ringtons and Amali Bunter from Waitrose to talk about what customers in the UK loved about Tanzanian tea. The programme is a service provided for tea farmers in the Rungwe area.

Cristina says, ‘These shows acknowledge that tea is only one crop and one concern for the target community. Therefore, a “whole person” approach is to be taken when addressing tea farmers; issues such as health, family planning etc. as well as financial and land issues will all be addressed’

‘Farmers have important knowledge gaps on markets and some land management issues. However, listeners do have a lifetime of experience and knowledge in farming; this know-how will be built upon in a way that makes them feel proud of who they are and avoids being prescriptive. The focus will be on finding best practice, gathering interviews and information that the farmers can use, or applicable practices that potentially have high impact.

Lebi Gabriel from RSTGA says,’ The programmes can be used as a platform to promote the work of WATCO as a company and strengthen the relationship between RSTGA and farmers.’

The post Farmer Radio in Tanzania first appeared on Lorna Young Foundation.