The Community Resilience Initiative has grown from a pilot in three villages to a working programme across fourteen. Behind every number in that scale-up is a farmer whose season looks different this year. Here are three of them.
Grace, Bindura. Two seasons ago Grace was farming half a hectare of maize on rented land. Today she runs a 1.5 hectare mixed-vegetable operation, supplies tomatoes into Lakefront's aggregation point weekly, and employs two seasonal workers from her village. Her turning point, in her words, was learning to keep records.
Tendai, Mashonaland Central. Tendai joined the programme as a chilli contract grower. His first harvest earned him more than his previous full season of maize. He has since reinvested into drip irrigation and is now trialling capsicum for the same offtake channel.
Chipo, Mount Darwin. Chipo leads a women's cooperative of eleven farmers producing leafy vegetables year-round. The cooperative pools transport, negotiates prices as a block, and reinvests a portion of every sale into a shared input fund. Their consistency has made them one of our most reliable suppliers.
These stories are not exceptional within the Community Resilience Initiative. They are increasingly typical — which is the entire point of the programme.
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