The initiative promotes family farming and sustainable systems by supporting a dynamic and fair farmers’ movement, directly financing farmers’ organisations and their partners (NGOs, local authorities, research institutes).
Mission:
Working together for inclusion
In the context of the European Foundations for Sustainable Agriculture and Food (EFSAF), created within the European Foundation Centre in 2014 to promote relations and exchange between European foundations committed to the themes of family and sustainable agriculture and sustainable food systems, a small group of foundations (Fondation de France, Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo, Fondazione Cariplo, New Field Foundation) launched a joint initiative called JAFOWA, Joint Action for Farmers’ Organisations in West Africa.
The aim of the initiative is to promote family farming and sustainable food systems by supporting a dynamic and fair farmers’ movement, directly financing farmers’ organisations and their partners (NGOs, local authorities, research institutes).
The first call for proposals addressed to farmers’ organisations in partnership with other local development organisations was launched in 2016 for the territories of Burkina Faso, Senegal and Ghana. and finances 8 proposals, each of which contributed in different ways to the four goals that form the structure of the JAFOWA theory of change:
- scalability of solutions;
- promotion of partnerships;
- focus of actions led by or for women and young people;
- promotion of advocacy with a strong sustainability dimension.
A second call for proposals was therefore launched in April 2019, based on the guidelines already set by the JAFOWA steering committee (COPIL), with the support of the advisory committee and external expertise in agro-ecology, and selected 8 new projects that will allow the skills of farmers’ organisations to be strengthened with contributions aimed at supporting training/support activities on agro-ecology issues and specific actions by technical consultants to support organisations in monitoring accounting and financial management.
As part of the project, annual exchange seminars will be organised to share and build on the experiences gained and continue promoting practice communities, supporting advocacy activities performed by farmers’ organisations nationally on the principal themes of the initiative (agro-ecology, promoting the role of women and young people in agriculture, enhancing the role of farmers’ organisations).
Find out more at jafowa.org
