About the Project

Yang-Ward Foundation seeks to empower single women of rural Nepal by teaching them farming skills such as sustainable organic cash crop production, poultry farming and pig farming. They are provided with leased land, seeds money and technical support, while foundation staff provide guidance and oversight. The income pays workers a generous wage. Profits leveraged with our international contacts and positive publicity we have garnered will build libraries and computer labs to expose students to modern educational technologies. So, in short, Yang-Ward Foundation seeks to empower underprivileged single women through revenue generating activities to gain financial independence while improving local educational facilities.

What We Need & What You Get

With the seed funding we received from The Resolution Project, we implemented our pilot program in the Eastern part of Nepal.The success of this pilot has generated considerable momentum, including requests from leaders of many other communities in Bhojpur and other parts of Nepal to expand the project. So Yang-Ward Foundation is ready to expand. Each community requires $10,000 to become sustainable. So we are hoping to raise 10,000 dollars to launch the next site. The costs are broken down as follows:

- $2,500: Salary for women for a year until project becomes self-sustainable.
- $2,000: Leasing land for 5 years.
- $1,500: Contingency Fund to address unexpected events such as weather, wild animals, plant disease etc. For example, we had unexpected monkey problems in our pilot program.
- $900: Building a hut where equipment is stored after work and vegetables are stored before taking them to market.
- $900: Construction of an irrigation canal, purchase of water pipe, water tanks etc.
- $600: Tools for production such as spades, garden rakes, sickles, water cans, water sprinklers, fences, etc.
- $400: Transporting equipments to field from district headquarters.
- $400: Transporting library books to local area from Kathmandu.
- $300: Indiegogo fees for successfully completing fund raising campaign.
- $250: Agricultural training for women by agricultural experts.
- $150: Bank transaction fees.
- $100: Purchase of piglets for manure purposes.
The Impact

Rural Nepal has nearly half a million impoverished single women, many widowed and abandoned during the civil war. These single women and their children become outcasts in their local communities, no longer supported by ex-husband’s families, struggling to survive and barely able to feed themselves and their children, much lessened those children to school.

This project seeks to turn these outcasts into valued contributors to their communities by achieving three key goals: 1) engaging these women in revenue generating agricultural activities that give them financial independence so they can feed and house themselves and their children, 2) achieving sustainability in which their activities can continue without added external funding, and 3) making significant contributions to improving education in local schools through donating books, scholarships and equipment to school libraries and computer labs. Financial independence will return to these women the dignity they deserve as individuals and enable them to help their children prepare for productive futures. Sustainability will permit this project to continue.

Nothing we can say about the significance of this project compares to the heartfelt words of one of the single mothers who have made the first site successful,

When my husband passed away, society and even my in-law family started dehumanizing me. Nobody lent me money when I wanted to take my infant baby to the local hospital for treatment. But now, I am working in this project and getting paid better. My financial health is improving and even people who turned me down in my difficult time, are changing their attitude towards me. I simply can’t thank Yang-Ward Foundation enough for bringing this miracle to my life.

- Sharmila Rai