Haley - McCready Outreach and Development Fund

After the successful completion to self-sustainability of the first seven projects approved for grant by the Corporation in 2022 and 2023 it issued its third Call for Community Agricultural Grant Proposals in Burundi in the spring of 2024. It received an impressive 18 applications for grants in response. After review by the Burundi Advisory Committee and the Board grants in the Burundian Franc equivalent of US$1500 were offered to five of the proposals which the Corporation considered had adequately met its criteria and development goals. Four of the approved projects were for breeding goats and cultivating certain crops and the fifth was for breeding pigs and cultivating crops by associations of women in rural communes in Burundi. Their project managers were all graduates of Hope Africa University's Community Agriculture Program or its equivalent. In addition the Corporation learned that one successful grant applicant with a previous project among the successfully-operating seven had voluntarily set-up a second unfunded project to benefit a different association of local young women and men and after review of that project's terms and structure the Board agreed to recognize that voluntary non-grant project amongst its approved grant projects and to issue it a small acknowledgement grant. All seven funded projects had carried-out the initial crop cultivation phase of their projects to self-sustainability by the end of 2024 including the one 2023 grant recipient which had deferred its start-up into 2024 due to unavailability of suitable land in its commune at the time. All regular reporting requirements had been satisfactorily met. For all the projects the purchase of the planned livestock was deferred until there were adequate proceeds from the first crops to finance continuing cultivation and purchase of the animals. The women's associations of the successful projects had become self-sustaining in the crop-cultivating phase and were able to offer some small microfinancing loans to assist members to engage in their own small enterprises.