The 1010 Project maintains a healthy email (and phone, and letter) correspondence with our friends and partners in Kenya. Some of these updates are joyful occasions, like a birth or a great success at a community-based organization. Others are sad, like droughts, food shortages, or violence. Then there are updates like this one, from Joshua, the Director of St. Luke’s out in western Kenya:

We wanted to share with you just a sample just of the sweet potatoes our widows harvested in the farm. It has amazed even the government agricultural officers and they are coming now to carry out a research [on the sweet potatoes].

This message had pictures attached to it that do a good job of showing the scale of what Joshua was talking about:

St. Luke’s has an abundance of amazing soil and dedicated families working the land. In addition to sweet potatoes, they also harvest maize and rice. There are also a few fish ponds where they grow tilapia to sell and eat. It’s an amazing agricultural success, and might someday be the training site for a version of the Global Entrepreneur Academy focused on rural entrepreneurship and farming.

St. Luke’s has taken in orphans from the HIV/AIDS crisis in Western Kenya. How are they able to sustain themselves? Through Income Generating Activities, or IGA’s: Fish farming, Rice Farming, Horticulture, and more. The 1010 Project provided funding in partnership with Vista Hermosa Foundation.