We currently have over 60 staff — 10 college-educated development associates/managers and over 50 professionals with high school or lower education level. There are 6 development staff living on site, and we will have even more professionals living at Mpingu when we complete construction of our staff house. All staff are earning toward full ownership of a house/apartment unit. On top of this, we hold daily English lessons for all staff and are working on helping all staff achieve their high school equivalent diploma. We’ll be embarking on building and selling several more buildings to our Mpingu site and then working toward another funding round at the start of the spring quarter.
Here's a brief video from several months ago that captures some of what’s been happening here. What is exciting is that all footage is from our sites and the video was produced entirely by our talented team. [Ed.: Also see the attached PDF containing a brief about Small Farm Cities Africa.]
I can’t thank Rotary enough for enabling me to study development and gain the knowledge that I apply daily here. I would be happy to share what SFC and I have been up to and how Rotary has enabled this to happen whenever and however I can. Thank you again and looking forward to sharing more updates soon.
Leif is willing to connect with any local Rotary club via Zoom to provide a more detailed presentation of the work he is doing and how his Global Grant Scholarship made it possible. Contact him at: leif.vangrinsven@gmail.com. When asking him to present, please remember that there is a 7-hour time difference during CDT and an 8-hour time difference during CST.