If at first you don’t succeed…

When 14 farmers from Fetomone village in West Timor, Indonesia, established their Farmer Group in March 2016, members agreed that they would cultivate corn together on a new plot of land. Unfortunately, due to some mistakes regarding the land’s arability and a lack of proper attention paid to the plot, things didn’t go as planned. The harvest failed.

Undeterred, the team decided to learn from their mistakes and try again. They did so with continued support from CWS staff and the local government agriculture extension worker. The group decided to plant vegetables instead, and they had very good results. “The vegetables really help us a lot – when we harvest, our families can eat some and the rest we can sell and share the income among our group members. This additional income means we can buy rice, cooking oil and salt. The money also helps us pay school costs for our children,” Hofmin Selan, one group member, said.

With their good results the farmers next decided to start saving as a group with each member contributing 10,000 Rupiah (75 cents) every time they sold some of their vegetables. “Now we have 220,000 Rupiah ($16.50) as our group savings,” explained Hofmin, who is also the Treasurer. “In the future, when we have enough savings, we plan to buy more seeds and more tools to expand our plot, and keep growing our savings group into a loan group, too, which would really help our members. Of course, we know we could not have done all that we have without the support of CWS,” added Hofmin, “and we are really grateful for the chance to partner with them.”