COWEA 2022 GOALS
Our goals focus on the women and children. We keep it simple; everything revolves around food and education for women and children. Our projects are designed to empower the individual to raise themselves out of poverty, then raise others up.
CHILDREN EDUCATION FUND
Send children to school -> as education raises people out of poverty.
COWEA’s Children Education Fund has three parts:
1. Send K-12 age children to school. In Liberia, education is pay to attend and uniforms are required. Many of the COWEA women do not have the means to send their children to school. We will raise funds to send children to school while their mother’s work on the farms raising crops to have food to eat and to pay for their own children’s schooling.
2. Pre-school education for younger children. Many of the COWEA women have young children requiring constant care and precluding them from working on the farms as much as they would like. Pre-school would provide education and precious hours for the mothers to work. Pre-school will (1) begin teaching children fundamentals of reading, writing and math, and (2) provide mother’s with free time to work on the farm and other activities (such as Women’s Education services).
3. Higher Education for children of the women of COWEA. Someday we hope to have a fund established to help college aged attend local university and gain an education to lift themselves out of poverty.
Fundraising goal for children’s K-12 education is: $150 per child per year.
Fundraising goal for Pre-school education is: $1500 per community per year.
Fundraising goal for Higher Education: to be determined on a case by case basis.
PALM OIL PLANTATION START
Establish our first Palm Oil Plantation to generate recurring revenue to fund COWEA operations and build new farming communities.
Palm oil is a vegetable oil used in cooking. Certain varieties of palm trees grow a hard fruit from which palm oil can be extracted. Our goal is to establish a palm oil plantation and produce palm oil for sale in local markets earning revenue for all COWEA communities. This is a critical step is making COWEA financially independent to continue establishing farms in new communities, educating women and sending children to school. The palm oil trees take 3 years to produce fruit. We will see our first harvest in 2025.
Phase one of the Palm Oil Plantation:
Step 1: Plant and grow seedlings: DONE! We started growing palm tree seedlings in the spring of 2022 in the Massamai community.
Step 2: Maintain and care for the seedlings until planting; this includes herbicides and insecticides as needed. The farming communities came together and purchased the first round of herbicides necessary in June. The plants are doing well now. We need ongoing care of these seedlings!
Step 3: Buy land in the fall of 2022 and plant the palm tree seedlings we started in March 2022. It will cost approximately $500 USD to purchase the 10 acres of land needed to establish the plantation, then another $200 to process the paperwork and transfer the land deed to COWEA.
Step 4: Clear land and plant seedlings. We will pay local men to perform this work – enabling the men to provide for their families and enrich the community. The seedlings must be protected from animals so they can grow into strong palm trees. To do this, we will place protective metal around the plants. We need $500 for clearing land, planting and protecting the seedlings.
Step 5: Ongoing maintenance of the seedlings to prevent weed infestation, animals from eating the seedling, and herbicide/insecticide as needed. We anticipate this to be a yearly cost of approximately $600.
Total remaining funds needed for Palm Oil Plantation Phase one, year one: $1800 USD
To donate to our Palm Oil Plantation project, please click here:
COWEA 2022 HEADQUARTER FUNDING
It takes a team to build, train and support the 7 COWEA farming communities progress toward self-sufficiency. We need help to support the women in these 7 farms as they work toward life sustaining food and income. That means education and administrative support.
Our current staff in Liberia is limited to Romeo Dennis, the founder and director of COWEA. We need to provide for security at the COWEA headquarters in Voinjama, building rent for 2023, a replacement computer and a replacement motorcycle (our previous motorcycle and computer were stolen in February 2022). We also want to hire a communications director who can help facilitate teaching the women and outbound communication (connecting with sponsors and donors).
Stipend for 3 staff through the end of 2022: $450 USD
Computer: $500 USD
Motorcycle: $950 USD
Training supplies: $100 USD
Total estimated 2022 remaining funds needed: $2000 USD
Future COWEA Goals
New Farming Communities
Build 1-2 new farming communities each year.
Each farm is approximately $4200 USD start to finish with a lot of education and support from COWEA sister communities and headquarters.
The first $2100 USD for phase one start up costs is for land purchase, deed registration. clearing, tools, hut (locked for tools), fencing, planting, bird nets and seed. The second phase $2100 USD (in year 2) is to purchase a mill, build a secure hut for the mill and provide a secure pig pen. With direction, education and support, this small amount can get a community of 50 women self sufficient within about 3 years.
Some ask, why the “secure” or “locked” huts for pigs and tools and mill? The answer, unfortunately, is because things are readily stolen. We have had tools, rice, motorcycle, computer and pigs stolen. Therefore, we need to secure the huts with locks.
Women’s Education
Women’s Education is for the women of COWEA in each of the farming communities. The director of COWEA and communications director provide teaching and training.
COWEA teaches the women organic self sustaining farming techniques, and how to establishing personal vegetable gardens.
Our goal is to expand into teaching basic personal health care for self and family (with intention to avoid disease), financial planning with the goal to help the women send their children to school and plan for future needs, and advanced personal vegetable farming techniques.
Our plan is to bring in experts in each field to help train the women.
Continued Children’s Education
Funding children’s K-12 Eduction.
Through donations and monies from the Palm Oil Plantations we will establish pre-schools in each community for the purpose (1) begin teaching children fundamentals of reading, writing and math, and (2) provide mother’s with free time to work on the farm and other activities (such as Women’s Education services).
We will use fund to send K-12 children to school.
We will also explore sponsoring college age children to attend university.
Education is the key that empowers people to lift themselves out of poverty.
Processing Mills
COWEA’s goal is to have a processing mill in each community.
Mills are used to process rice and cassava. In addition, the women in each community can process rice and cassava for other farmers, thereby earning in-kind payment and increasing food and revenue (when foodstuffs are sold) to provide for maintenance of the mill, diesel fuel, children’s education, medicine for women and children when sick, and funding new initiatives the women in the communities develop on their own.
We encourage the women to develop their own entrepreneurial endeavors. To date, the women in some communities haven taken to growing vegetables on the farms during the off season for rice or cassava. This was their idea and it has proven successful providing food and income for some of the women.
Future Palm Oil Plantations
Starting in 2023, we aim to start one new Palm Oil Plantation each year to create a source of perpetual, self-sustaining income for COWEA operations and growth.
This will fund the future of COWEA with more farms for more women, more children to school, more education for women.
We empower women to live a better life.
Please consider donating to COWEA projects and help empower women
We have multiple projects you can participate in from starting new farms to building a palm oil plantation to ongoing education programs.
