The heart of our work in all of our projects is not just to meet the basic needs of the people, but to help them to help themselves, a hand shake, not a hand out! One of of our most important projects that we have in terms of sustainability is the Micro Farm, which lifts the small and rural community in Negresti into a position where the people who live there have the means to work, produce, trade, sell and earn.
The project has gone from strength to strength since its inception in 2014 and we have seen success not just with the plentiful harvests each year, but also in the amount of animals that are breeding and thriving at the Micro Farm. They now have a healthy stock of pigs including 13 adults and 18 juveniles who are weaned and eating! On top of that 4 of the adults are due more litters of piglets over the winter. With so many pigs they are running out of space and need another barn to house the new babies.
Generally this is where we would come in, however with the farm heading towards becoming totally self sustaining, the team have it all under control! Using left over material, as well as proceeds from sales from the Micro Farm combined with the people power from the community they will complete these extra buildings with no financial support from ourselves whatsoever.
This is an exciting development for us as we move towards sustainability in Romania. Though the its a long road we are delighted to see the community empowered and having the opportunity to lift themselves from poverty.