A bit about Haller
Since 2004 Haller has been working with nature to farm the unfarmable and helping smallholder communities living on fragile land in Kenya to thrive. Haller’s work has already impacted the lives of 42,000 farmers in 40 communities. For more information about Haller visit the Foundation’s website.
Whilst we continue to work with such communities in 2014 we realised that if we wanted to scale our impact to the 5million+ smallholder farmers in Kenya, we would have to take a new approach.
Introducing the Haller Farmers App
In 2014, to complement our successful work and on-the-ground presence, we launched the Haller Farmers App. The App builds on the technological revolution taking place across sub-Saharan Africa and puts our 50 years of proven, sustainable farming techniques – all of which are low cost, organic and easily replicable – directly in the hands of smallholder farmers.
It is an innovative and exciting project that builds on the near countrywide network coverage and affordable smartphone technology in rural Kenya and East Africa. Since its launch, the App has already been used by over 10,000 people in over 140 countries! Please take a look at the App by clicking here.
Support a new step in international development!
Kenya’s farmers
Agriculture is Kenya’s biggest industry and there are over 5 million smallholder farmers in the country. Many have minimal knowledge of sustainable farming techniques and live on unproductive land in areas far from the services of agricultural extension workers.
With 80% of these smallholder farmers being women, we believe the Haller Farmers App can help to reduce the gender divide by giving women access to our proven farming knowledge and expertise. The significance of this step is recognised by the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) who estimate that female empowerment in Africa would see farm productivity grow by 20%.
We want your help to grow the App, bridge the gender divide by empowering women, and in turn improve the lives of millions of in Africa by 2020!
Education = Empowerment = Opportunity = Success
Impact of the App
The App takes advantage of rapidly growing smartphone ownership and 74.2% Internet penetration in Kenya. More and more Kenyans are buying smartphones and recent data shows that over two-thirds of all new mobiles bought are smartphones!
Now, thanks to these developments and the creation of our App, proven and affordable farming techniques and tips, are available to thousands more people.
Features of the App
– Choice of language (English and Swahili) with audio
– Free to download
– Uses less than 1MB of data
– User centred design
– Library of farming information with accompanying images
– Information covering soil health, water conservation, animals and fisheries, vegetables, plants and urban farming
Partnership with internet.org
The Haller Farmers App enjoys a partnership in Kenya with the Facebook initiative Internet.org and is the only agricultural content provider on their Freebasics site (www.freebasics.com).
This means smartphone users in Kenya with an Airtel sim card can access the Haller Farmers App for free. By making the Internet more accessible in this way, we can have a larger impact and users can benefit in ways they may not have otherwise.
What funding will do
The App is an ambitious project. We are aiming for it to be used by 5 million smallholder farmers by 2020. We need your help to turn it into the best resource it can possibly be!
Smartphones are often a shared resource, so if we can put just one phone into a community, it has potential to impact on a hundred others.
With your donations we want to ensure all the communities we work with have a smartphone andsolar charger as well as all of the valuable information found on Haller Farmers App. We will also expand our App Mentor team, who work with smallholders to help them get the most out of this technology.
In the future we will add new content, information and services to the App for the users. This includes an e-commerce feature, weather and market data, micro loans, crop insurance as well as monitoring and evaluation services.
Who will you help?
Meet Patricia!
Watching Patricia plant her plot in rural Kenya, it is amazing to see her reach for her smartphone, not to make a call, but to find step-by-step instructions on what she needs to do to grow more food and make more money.
By funding this initiative you will be helping thousands of farmers just like Patricia. Our mission is to ensure all smallholders have the same opportunities as her and with your help this can become a reality.
Why not join our community? For African farming, agriculture, technology and business news as well as updates about our work and impact in Kenya, check out our Haller Social Media pages:
Facebook: Haller Farmers App
Twitter: https://twitter.com/HallerFarmers
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hallercharity/
Pinterest: https://uk.pinterest.com/hallercharity/
Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/hallerfoundation
Aims of the project
1. To provide each Haller community with a smartphone and solar charger.
2. Expand our App Mentor team to spread awareness about the App on-the-ground and provide training for smallholder farmers so they can get the most out of the App.
In the longer term we hope to develop the App into a platform providing smallholders with an integrated set of farming and financial services. This would include:
New Services
We will use the funding to add other resources like location specific weather updates and market information to to the App. We also hope to add an e-commerce feature, which will allow users to buy and sell farming products via the platform itself and will require a payment gateway. The addition of these services will transform the App into an all-inclusive resource for smallholder farmers.
Expansion
In order for the App to reach its goal and be the go-to platform for smallholder farmers new languages will need to be added.
In 2014, to complement our successful work and on-the-ground presence, we launched the Haller Farmers App. The App builds on the technological revolution taking place across sub-Saharan Africa and puts our 50 years of proven, sustainable farming techniques – all of which are low cost, organic and easily replicable – directly in the hands of smallholder farmers.
See Campaign: https://startsomegood.com/hallerfarmersapp
Contact Information:
The Haller Farmers App
Tags:
StartSomeGood, Eastern Africa, Reward, Agriculture, Farming, English, Computers and Software, Mobile and Social Apps, Kenya, Africa, Industry verticals, Regions, Types of Crowdfunding deal, Language
Source: icnw