Founded in 2010, the Green Shoots Foundation has been working toward poverty relief through holistic and sustainable development programs. An additional focus on bolstering economies and education helps empower the areas of Africa and Asia the foundation specializes in. The Green Shoots Foundation is fighting poverty by using accountability and transparency to achieve its goals. It organizes its missions into three particular programming areas:

• Education Loans & Social Entrepreneurship (ELSE): This programming area works to enhance children’s education by promoting education in urban slums, fighting against the gender education gap and promoting social enterprises and urban entrepreneurship.
• Food, Agriculture & Social Entrepreneurship (FASE): The ultimate objective in this programming area is to revitalize rural communities through agricultural training, sustainable gardens and social enterprise missions.
• Medical Assistance & Medical Education (MAME): This programming area combats HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases. MAME works with HIV professionals to transfer medical knowledge to locals and improve treatment accessibility.

The Food, Agriculture & Social Entrepreneurship Sector (FASE)

The Food, Agriculture & Social Entrepreneurship sector (FASE) of the Green Shoots Foundation is fighting poverty by working to restimulate rural economies through teaching sustainable agricultural skills and supporting business development.

Specific objectives characterize the goals of FASE and how they plan on improving the development in rural areas. These include:

• Addressing a lack of education in the countryside
• Promoting sustainable farming techniques
• Addressing a lack of social capital in the countryside
• Promoting rural entrepreneurship

FASE in the Philippines and Cambodia

FASE has completed notable work in the Philippines and Cambodia. In the Philippines, it is working to promote business opportunities for food and agriculture, as well as implement social innovation platforms such as the Enchanted Farm. The Enchanted Farm works to stimulate economic growth in different areas and simultaneously fight against poverty and food insecurity. Work in the Philippines has resulted in six-month long volunteer missions to help two different businesses that the Enchanted Farm is developing. In Cambodia, work has focused around horticulture education and environmental sustainability; 2014 proved to be a prominent year in FASE’s work as it implemented the Agricultural Skills in Public Schools (ASPUS) Project. Then, in 2018, the Agri-tech Training Center took the spotlight as the primary location for rural development and certified horticulture education in northwest Cambodia.

The Agri-tech Training Center

The Agri-tech Training Center serves as a community learning center that offers both training areas and demonstrations connected to rural development. These lessons have the intention of benefitting the public’s knowledge on agriculture. The center offers workshops on microfinance, nutrition and food growing. The center hopes to provide access to sustainable farming practices, improve the application of rural development skills in an ecofriendly way and enhance the capacity of young farmers for enterprise development. The organization also partners with five different local companies in North West Cambodia to help bolster its economy and build meaningful connections in the community. Each year, the center targets to train at least 200 local, young students. The Agri-tech Training Center advocates that training these young people will lead to local problem solving and increase entrepreneurship in the rural area.

The Green Shoots Foundation is fighting poverty through its work helping rural communities develop their economies through food and agriculture, education and medical aid. FASE’s vocational training staff at the Agri-tech Training Center has been working tirelessly to educate those in North West Cambodia on how to better themselves and their communities. Through the work of this foundation, people living in impoverished areas are able to combat hunger and bring themselves out of generational poverty.

– Hope Shourd
Photo: Flickr