Rally Around Harbel Farm in Liberia
Help us build a self-sustaining farm in Monrovia, Liberia!
Through the GoFundMe platform, we're raising the costs for 2 acres of palm, 2 acres of cocoa, 2 acres of plantain, and 2 fields of rice to help develop a community farm that will feed hundreds of people and create a source of local employment.
Emmanuel Bimba manages Harbel Farm, and he and his family are the heartbeat of their community in Monrovia, Liberia. Emmanuel has a heart for changing people's lives, and he and his wife, Fatu, now run 3 orphanages housing 150 orphans, most affected by the decimation of 14 years of civil war and then the Ebola crisis of 2014-2015.
We at the grassroots nonprofit of One Body One Hope have been partnering with Pastor Emmanuel and his community in Monrovia since 2007-- it began with rice drives for his starving Liberian congregations and progressed to providing child sponsorships for their 150 children in 3 orphanages, starting a K-12 school, installing clean water wells, providing consistent medical care including increased needs during the Ebola crisis, and developing 178 acres of farmland into Harbel Farm. This is all in partnership with AVDC, Emmanuel's sisterhood of Liberian churches, with local Liberians leading the way in all projects.
A cook at the orphanage preparing rice.
One of the biggest ways for the Dumbar Farm suburb of Monrovia to become a self-sustaining community is for that farmland to become productive, providing food, employment, and independence to the community. This is a special passion of Emmanuel's, and it is now ours, too!
This is especially important in an area with little to no infrastructure, where employment is almost impossible, and education is rarely available. Without the means of developing these things, whole communities are left with little way to provide for their families. Harbel Farm will be a major resource and source of change for the entire area. Right now over 40 people work on this farm. Additionally, Emmanuel’s long-term goal with the farm is to help the farm workers start their own small businesses: family farms!
This summer Liberian farmers in the community will be planting 15 acres of oil palm (60 trees per acre), 15 acres of intercropped plantain and cocoa (950 trees per acre), and 2 acres of rice. Their goal for the farm is for it to be self-sustaining, needing no outside assistance, by 2021. But until that point, they need assistance to support planting. Oil palm and cocoa take up to 3 years to produce fruit, and the land has not been farmed in years, taking the total bill for this self-sustaining farm to $200,000 by 2021. However, once producing, these trees raise crops for over 25 years and produce fruit and grain that's high in demand in Liberia, as well as developing employment, independence, and community identity for years to come.
Harbel Farm Aerial View
Our GoFundMe project is attempting to raise the costs for 2 acres of palm ($2,000), 2 acres of cocoa ($1,050), 2 acres of plantain ($600), and 2 fields of rice ($300) (plus GoFundMe's fees) by Oct 15. Though this is a long-term project, many urgent needs are surfacing. For example, this month we will be sending the cost of seeds with a nursery, where the farm employees will plant their own palm and cocoa seeds for next year’s crop. Each palm seed costs $1.00, cocoa seeds are $0.20. In order to plant an additional 20 acres of palm next year, it would require 65 seeds/acre, or $1,300 in seeds just to begin the nursery. We need to plant the nursery as soon as possible, so the plants will be ready to plant a year from now. And the sooner the better!
Your help will make a significant, tangible difference to the success of this farm and will help to feed hundreds or even thousands of people for the next 25+ years.
All money donated to this fundraiser goes directly to this farm project. No overhead for OBOH is covered by these funds. Every penny goes to support the development and sustainability of this farm. That's our promise. We are so grateful for every dollar raised here-- changing communities changes lives. And changes this big keep working for generations!
To hear from Emmanuel himself, play the video above!
Emannuel and Fatu with children from the orphanages
Click for more on what OBOH does and our work in Liberia. And please contribute to the success of Harbel Farm by donating and sharing! We are so grateful.
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