Our first Impact Hangout takes us to the One Acre Fund. We’ll reconnect with this program and find out how they’ve grown from serving 25,000 families to more than 300,000 families in Rwanda, Kenya, Tanzania and Burundi in just six years. This is the first of a series of Impact Hangouts for 2015.

One Acre Fund planned and achieved significant growth

We get very invested in our featured programs. Each month, we immerse ourselves in information about that month’s program, watch videos, view the Hangouts, and raise money.

But as important as that program seems at the time, we are less connected with their progress as time goes on. To address that gap, we’re starting Impact Hangouts — a new  version of the popular monthly Hangout “conversations” we have with our featured programs. We’ll be identifying programs that have grown and expanded since our grant and look at the continuing impact they’ve been able to have.

We are starting with the One Acre Fund, a program working in Rwanda that we funded in August 2009. Our grant of $18,437 provided seed and fertilizer for 400 families, directly impacting some 2000 individuals, with the planned goal of the families doubling their income per acre. The organization provides the tools to get family farmers up and running, field staff who help farmers implement improved agriculture methods and maximize planting, harvest and sales. At the time of our grant, the program selection team said: “One Acre Fund helps women and families lift themselves out of poverty by increasing their farming skills set—providing material resources such as appropriate seed and fertilizer and crop insurance –and facilitating greater market reach. They provide a complete, functioning market system–-making it possible for even the poorest and most rural farmer to generate more income, and permanently solve their own hunger problems.”

Today, One Acre Fund has experienced significant growth — from 25,000 families served in Kenya and Rwanda in 2009 to more than 300,000 families expected to be served this year.

DFW Executive Director Beth Ellen Holimon will host our Impact Hangouts and lead a wide-ranging discussion that will include the impact in the area we originally funded, how OAF achieved its growth and suggestions for other non profits on how to leverage opportunities to achieve greater success.

View our conversation with Breihan Lynch of One Acre Fund.

This is the first of an occasional series of Impact Hangouts. We expect to do four this year. If there’s a program you are interested in reconnecting with, let us know.