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YOUR DONATION BENEFITS
THE LIVES OF MILLIONS
OF SMALL-SCALE FARMERS.
OUR GUIDING PRINCIPLES
People-centred development: We aspire to carry out development that is rooted in the interests, hearts and minds of the communities we work with. People participation is central to our work because we believe that the people are capable of thinking and transforming their lives.
Empowerment of land users: We seek to facilitate the empowerment of poor and marginalized people, especially small-scale farmers so that they are listened to, respected and have adequate food and means to lead better lives.
Respect for indigenous knowledge: We prize and build on local knowledge systems seasoned into wisdom over several centuries of practice and thought. We challenge over-dependence on the “Western hill of knowledge”.
Creativity and innovation: We value and promote the generation of solutions to problems in creative and innovative ways as a fundamental requirement for growth and development.
Commitment to action and impact: We only do those things that help communities to bring about sustainable social change.
Support for the struggle against exploitative practices: We fight against oppressive policies and practices, especially those with a bearing on smallholder farmers.
Gender sensitive development: We lobby for gender and inter-generational equity and equality.
Transparency and positive self-criticism: We will always be accountable to network members and to the communities we work with. We will strive to self-criticise so that we learn from doing, reflecting and replan accordingly.
Regionalism: We value and foster the spirit of regionalism as strategic alliance harnessing the strength residing in countries of the regions. It is a strategic alliance, a synergy upon which the clout of PELUM is built.
Sustainability: Responsible management of natural, physical, human and social capital in a manner that maintains or enhances their productive potential for current and future generations.
RUNNING PROGRAMMES
Seed and Nutrition: We are engaging in seed and nutrition on practical and political intervention level and availing small-scale farmers with a platform to discover knowledge together, invent or modify strategies to sustain community based seed systems. Our work is premised on the need to advance the ongoing struggle for a socially just and ecologically sustainable society, in which farming households and communities have control and decision making power over the production and distribution of food and seed. This work is also intended to respond to regional malnutrition challenges which is above the 20% WHO threshold for stunting with Zimbabwe registering 32% stunted children.
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Water, dry land cropping and rangeland management: We are applying ecological concepts to design and manage agriculture systems for sustainable production, healthy environments and resilient communities. We promote the use of agro-ecological concepts to respond to an enormous tsunami of humanity’s own making which has resulted in some of the world’s most pressing challenges such as desertification, droughts, floods, food insecurity and climate change.
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2021 Zimbabwe National Seed and Food Festival
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Our programmes are designed to foster collective work towards a unifying goal. This improves individual performance and increases impact while presenting opportunities for cross pollination of experiences, ideas, skills and knowledge.
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Our work provide on-going dialogue on new approaches, experiences and methods and we feed smale-scale farmers' experiences and skills into a process of change across the wider spectrum of society.
We search out innovative methods and experiences that add and strengthen what is already happening. This enables small-scale farmers to continue to learn together. It is our belief that new approaches should be fed into a system and freely taken up according to need. For this to happen, network members need to be strong in doing what they do best and our programmes are there to support this process.