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A Revolution of Accountability and Transparency

Honduras, February 2020

“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.” There has perhaps never been a time when these words, often attributed to George Orwell, resonate more than they do today. Groundswell International does not advocate for revolution in the traditional sense, but we do support radical transparency and accountability to donors, partners, and the people we serve, and if that is a revolutionary act, so be it. 

Groundswell’s founders created a bottom-up, network organizational structure that seeks to be truly accountable and transparent to the people we serve, to our partners around the world, and to the thousands of supporters who make our work possible. We continually strive to improve upon our structure and operating model in keeping with these principles and to bring our innovative approaches to scale.

To this point, we have:

  • Undertaken annual financial audits. Since 2010, Groundswell has hired third party, certified public accountants to audit our organization’s finances;
  • Implemented a robust planning, monitoring and evaluation system, which reliably generates information that we use to make decisions to improve program quality and provide accurate, timely reports to donors;
  • Maintained a nonprofit profile on GuideStar. In 2020, we achieved the Platinum Seal of Transparency, the highest level of recognition GuideStar awards; and, 
  • Adopted the Donor Bill of Rights. Earlier this year, our Board of Directors adopted the Donor Bill of Rights to underscore Groundswell’s commitment to uphold the highest levels of trust and transparency to the people who make our work possible.

Moving forward, we pledge to continue to center our work and operations around the values of accountability and transparency. There has never been a more important time to reaffirm our commitment to these values. We believe they are essential to building the long-term relationships of trust and collaboration required to do effective development work. Moreover, we believe that nonprofits have the responsibility to set an example and to contribute to restoring these values to their rightful place in our society.

As we draw nearer to the close of a difficult year around the globe, we urge everyone to consider the role we all play in working to improve the lives around us through compassion, action, truth, and empathy. We may grow weary of the struggles of today, but we know that others have been in strife daily for generations and will continue to face challenges tomorrow. We, together, have the opportunity and global responsibility to affect real change by advocating for policy, sharing knowledge, securing resources, and sharing stories of our neighbors around the world. That’s exactly the kind of work we have been doing over the last decade, and with help from like-minded change-makers including donors, partner agencies, and board members, will continue to do, 

Let’s move ahead, together.

Guiding Principles in Challenging Times

The original article appeared first from Groundswell International’s Executive Director, Steve Brescia, on LinkedIn.

Haitian farmers working together to regenerate their land. Photo by Ben Depp.
Haitian farmers working together to regenerate their land. Photo by Ben Depp.

This has been an exhausting and disorienting year. In the United States, we face deep divisions, even while we are challenged to join forces to confront huge crises. Currents of hope, fear, determination and anxiety run deep. Where do we find inspiration in these rough seas to steer towards real solutions? We at Groundswell draw on what we have learned from rural families around the world, and from our heroic front-line partner organizations that are strengthening communities and social movements in Africa, the Americas and South Asia to create better lives.

In Haiti some years ago, a farmer told me of a deep grudge he had with a neighbor. The animosity had been passed down from their grandfathers. Decades ago, one grandfather had let his goats loose to graze, and they ate the other man’s crops. An argument ensued, a machete was drawn, and one of the men lost his arm below the elbow. The anger between the families festered over decades. The specific incident was no doubt surrounded by other feelings that I cannot know – suspicion, mistrust, anxiety about scarce resources.

Now the two men are in the same solidarity group (gwoupman in Haitian Creole), working together to overcome existential crises that threaten their families and their community. This stretches my imagination. How can this be possible? This is not a naïve story about papering over profound conflict. It is about people recognizing that to survive and thrive they need each other to create their common good. 

My colleague Cantave Jean-Baptiste, Director of our partner organization Partenariat pour le Développement Local (PDL) in Haiti, has taught over the years that restoring the soil on eroded mountainside farms, overcoming hunger, or surmounting any other great obstacle, starts with creating solidarity between people, not adopting new technology. Like the two Haitian farmers, I need to understand that my existence and wellbeing are dependent on the community. As a community, we need to develop together some shared understanding of the challenges we face and the common good we seek.  

But how do you we promote solidarity in place of conflict? PDL staff start by bringing groups of 10-15 women and men together for reflection. Reflection usually leads to action. Over several weeks, peasant farmers analyze the facts of their history, the dynamics of their culture, and their dreams for the future. They discuss the brutalities of slavery; Haitians’ courageous slave rebellion; the exploitation and repression at the hands of dictators; the intentional promotion of distrust between people; their resilient culture of love for family, community, place and spirituality; and, the destruction of the Haiti’s environment. Participants reflect on how their personal stories of pain and hope are connected to this history. Tears are often shed. Eventually, the men and women ask themselves: Do we want to commit to ‘put our heads together,’ as they say and sing, to overcome the crises we face now? ‘Alone,’ they say, ‘we can’t create soil and water conservation barriers to regenerate our land and grow enough food to eat. Alone we can’t do that across whole mountainsides, so that landslides from above don’t wipe out family farmers below. Alone, we can’t overcome the growing indebtedness to money lenders, or the exploitation of middlemen who control markets for seeds and grain. Together, we can.’ The women and men decide whether they want to form a solidarity group together – pooling resources, decision making, and work. It is possible to begin. They start to take action. 

I have had the great privilege over decades of learning with colleagues like Cantave across many countries and cultures and seeing these kinds of dynamics repeated. I am comforted by the fact that certain ‘first principles’ seem common to how communities succeed:

  • Solidarity based on shared values and common needs.
  • Working for the common good by developing a shared analysis of the problem and the desired future.
  • Regeneration of the natural resources that people depend on, instead of short-sighted, extractive methods that characterize conventional agriculture.
  • Local, democratic control to create local economies that are of, by and for the people.

Even though we are struggling with painful divisions in the US and around the world, we must act to overcome the tremendous challenges before us: the COVID-19 pandemic; climate change; systematic racism and the legacy of colonialism; the marginalization of women; economic rules that generate inequality and insecurity.   

In the last week, Hurricane Eta lashed Nicaragua, Guatemala and Honduras, where 1.6 million people were affected. Climate change is accelerating extreme events like hurricanes and droughts. In Eta’s aftermath, Edwin Escoto, Groundswell’s Regional Coordinator based in Honduras, wrote: Global Warming. Climate Crisis. Revenge of Gaia. The horrific consequences of continuing to mistreat our planet are the same, regardless of the terminology. However, that doesn’t mean that the outcome is inevitable. We, together as global neighbors, can – and must – do better. Agroecology is one of the most proven, sustainable solutions available to us in our quest to mitigate the effects of climate change.

In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, our colleague Peter Gubbels in West Africa recently wrote:  This tension between COVID-19 optimism and pessimism is currently playing out in dialogues regarding the farming and food system of sub-Saharan Africa … Even before the COVID-19 crisis, the African food system was in crisis … In the context of Africa, one of the best ways to bolster a person’s health and resistance to diseases such as COVID-19 is through nutritious diets. Recognizing this, Groundswell International and the Global Resilience Partnership are sounding a clarion call for governments to support actions to improve food and nutrition security through the promotion of “agroecology”.

During these disorienting times, Groundswell International, the partner organizations and communities we work with in 10 countries will continue to ‘put our heads together’ and work for real and bold solutions, guided by principles we continue to learn together from the ground up.

You can join us in our work to cultivate real and bold solutions by clicking here.

Hurricane Eta is a Bleak Reminder of a Climate in Crisis and Why Agroecology is a Solution

Groundswell’s Regional Coordinator for Latin America and the Caribbean, Edwin Escoto, shared the below statement regarding the devastation of Hurricane Eta in Central America. For non-Spanish speakers, we have provided an edited English translation following the statement from Edwin. For anyone looking to help provide long-term food security to the region, you can donate here. 

Huracán Eta: La venganza de la tierra

La flecha muestra el sitio donde estaba puente sobre el rio Ulua que comunica a comunidades de Chinda en Santa Bárbara. Es en estas comunidades donde apoyan los colegas de SVH o TCP.

Por: Edwin Escoto 

Durante miles de años la Humanidad ha explotado la tierra sin tener en cuenta las consecuencias. Ahora que el calentamiento global y el cambio climático son evidentes para cualquier observador imparcial, la Tierra comienza a vengarse. Así lo cita el famoso científico y ambientalista británico James Lovelock en su libro “La venganza de la tierra”.

Las consecuencias del nivel de degradación ambiental y de lo mal que hemos tratado a la naturaleza, evidenciado en la deforestación de los bosques, heridas en los ríos con el saqueo de sus huesos, despreciado a la tierra arrojándole basura; y que, ahora pretendemos que sea tranquila, dócil y afable mientras ella con su actuar rebelde nos recuerda que nos ha dado oportunidades para rectificar nuestro trato, de lo contrario más temprano que tarde habrá reciprocidad en tan desigual relación. 

Eta el más reciente y devastador huracán que desató su furia en Centroamérica, es solamente una forma de manifestación que el planeta tiene y nos recuerda lo vulnerable que somos. En los países más afectados, Nicaragua, Honduras y Guatemala la historia ha sido la misma, lluvias, inundaciones deslizamientos, evacuados y lo peor de todo, un considerable número de muertos. Y como casi siempre, la población en situación de pobreza las más afectada. 

Imágenes dramáticas de ciudades bajo el agua, son solamente un reflejo del daño que hemos causado al planeta. Despertemos humanidad, aún hay tiempo nos dijo Berta Cáceres, líder indígena y social asesinada en 2016 por su lucha en la defensa de la tierra, de los ríos, de la vida. 

Calentamiento Global, cambio climático, la venganza de la tierra; no importa como le llamemos, aún existen alternativas de convivencia comprobadas. La Agroecología es una de ellas o quizás la única. Las comunidades que han resistido las acometidas de la naturaleza han sido aquellas en las cuales las familias realizan prácticas de producción basadas en el conocimiento ancestral, pero especialmente basadas en la no interrupción de los ciclos de la naturaleza.

Desde Groundswell International se promueven de proyectos de esperanza que construyen vida, que apuntan a reducir pobreza y evitar que familias enteras se vayan de nuestros países ya sea por la violencia, inseguridad y por la falta de alimentos.

Por cierto, uno de los mayores efectos de mediano y largo plazo que el huracán Eta dejará en la población afectada, en su mayoría urbana, será la falta de alimentos, pues grandes extensiones de cultivos que hacen parte de la dieta básica centroamericana han sido afectadas (maíz, frijol y arroz), de igual manera han sido afectados cultivos de agroexportación. Seguirán siendo las familias campesinas que residen en las tierras marginales (de ladera), quienes provean de alimento al resto de la población. Sin embargo, la mayor dificultad será la movilización ya que debido a los deslizamientos de tierra muchas carreteras permanecen obstruidas, al igual que se ha interrumpido el paso por la caída de puentes sobre caudalosos y temporales ríos. 

Ante tal panorama y en el afán de asegurar los alimentos, se requiere apoyo para el almacenamiento local de granos (maíz y frijoles), para ello infraestructura de acopio es necesaria. Ya los productores organizados mantienen reservas comunitarias como una estrategia para enfrentar el desabastecimiento provocado por el COVID-19 y las medidas gubernamentales que restringen la movilización.

Lo anterior es solamente uno de los beneficios de la Agroecología, la cual ha ganado mucha atención en las últimas tres décadas como base para la transición a una agricultura que no solo proporcionaría a las familias rurales beneficios sociales, económicos y ambientales significativos, sino que también alimentaría a la población urbana de manera equitativa y sostenible.

Pobladores de Azabache, Danlí, El Paraíso en labores de limpieza de la carretera que fue obstaculizada por deslizamiento de tierra.
Cultivo de café afectado por deslizamiento de tierra en comunidades de Azabache, Danlí, El Paraíso
Carretera destrozada en comunidades de Azabache, Danlí, El Paraíso

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Hurricane Eta: Revenge of the Earth

By: Edwin Escoto 

For too long, humanity has exploited the Earth with little concern for the long-term consequences. Now, with the impacts of global climate change ravaging much of the planet, the Earth is making us feel the consequences of our disregard. This is what the famous British scientist and environmentalist James Lovelock warned in his book “Revenge of Gaia.”

Our mistreatment of the Earth can be seen almost everywhere – in the deforested landscapes, air thick with pollution, rivers fouled with chemicals, oceans filled with plastic, and rising sea levels. According to Sofar Ocean, “Rising sea levels will impact our drinking water, food supply, and overall health. “As sea levels rise, saltwater intrusion into freshwater increases the salinity of groundwater basins and well water. This reduces crop yields and the availability of safe drinking water. It also increases the risk of hypertension, as well as vector-borne and diarrheal disease,” said one joint report by the Public Health Institute and the Center for Climate Change and Health.” Yet, we expect the Earth to remain docile as we continue to kill her. She’s angry now, and her anger will keep showing up in increasingly dangerous ways until we take steps to remedy all the wounds we’ve inflicted.

Hurricane Eta, the most recent and devastating hurricane that unleashed its fury in Central America, is a bleak reminder of our vulnerability as a species when up against planetary forces responding to the climate crisis. In the most affected countries of Nicaragua, Honduras, and Guatemala, the story has been the same – rains, floods, landslides, evacuees, and tragically, a considerable number of deaths. As in almost every natural disaster, the population living in poverty is the most affected. 

One of the harshest long-term effects that hurricane Eta will have on Central America, mostly in urban settings, will be the lack of food, since large areas of crops that are part of the region’s basic diet have been affected (corn, beans, and rice). It will continue to be the peasant families residing in the marginal lands (on the hillside) who provide food for the rest of the population. However, the greatest difficulty will be mobilization in the aftermath of landslides. Many roads remain obstructed and main passageways have been interrupted by the fall of bridges over large and temporary rivers. 

In an effort to supply enough food for the population, support is required for the local storage of grains (corn and beans). Organized producers already maintain community reserves as a strategy to face the shortages caused by COVID-19 and the government measures that restrict mobilization.

This is just one of the benefits of Agroecology, which has gained much attention in the last three decades as an effective means to transition from conventional to ecological agriculture that would not only provide rural families with significant social, economic, and environmental benefits, but also as a long-term solution to feed urban populations in an equitable and sustainable way.

Global Warming. Climate Crisis. Revenge of Gaia. The horrific consequences of continuing to mistreat our planet are the same, regardless of the terminology. However, that doesn’t mean that the outcome is inevitable. We, together as global neighbors, can – and must – do better. Agroecology is one of the most proven, sustainable solutions available to us in our quest to mitigate the effects of climate change. The communities who have been able to reclaim a symbiotic relationship with the natural world around them have been those in which families carry out production practices based on ancestral knowledge and rooted in agroecological operations which honor nature’s cycles.

Groundswell International promotes programs of hope that build livelihoods aimed at reducing poverty and preventing entire families from forced migration due to violence, crippling poverty, systemic suppression, and food insecurity.

Please contribute to helping provide nutritional security and support for Central America by clicking here.

COVID-19 Recovery Is a Chance to Make the Africa Food and Farming System More Resilient

By: Peter Gubbels, Nathanial Matthews, and Deon Nel

This article was originally published on October 23, 2020 on AgriLinks.

Zaï Water Microcatchment basins in the Sahel
Zaï Water Microcatchment basins in the Sahel

The pandemic has acted as a giant magnifying lens. It has shed light on inequality, the vulnerability of people’s livelihoods, and the fragilities of a hyperconnected global economic system.

Optimists say the pandemic is focusing policy minds on the need for more decisive, collective action on many resilience issues, including food and agriculture. As governments invest enormous resources to recover from COVID-19, many civil society groups are insisting on changing the system for the better.  Optimists are saying: “build back better”.  

Pessimists respond that the pandemic is only a moment that sheds light on well-known flaws and injustices before going back “to business as usual.” Once economies stabilize, the overall global system will continue unaltered. Various interest groups, who helped create the status quo before the pandemic, are still powerful players.

This tension between COVID-19 optimism and pessimism is currently playing out in dialogues regarding the farming and food system of sub-Saharan Africa.

Even before the COVID-19 crisis, the African food system was in crisis. In 2018, more than 250 million people in sub-Saharan Africa experienced severe food insecurity, most of them in rural areas. More than 30 percent of children are stunted partly due to poverty and poor diets. 

The socio-economic benefits of investing in small-scale farm families, who often constitute more than 60 percent of the population, are obvious. Many governments in sub-Saharan Africa, however, favor agri-business, larger-scale commercial farms and the promotion of cash crops. The prevailing thinking is that “modernizing” agriculture requires mechanization, irrigation, increased use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, and the use of hybrid seeds. The focus is primarily on increased yields and profits.

The COVID-19 pandemic highlights that African countries have become highly dependent on large international food industries and the global imported food market. Last year, according to the African Development Bank, approximately $35 billion worth of agricultural products were imported into Africa. This expected to rise to $110 billion by 2025.

Importing such massive amounts of food weakens the resilience of African economies. It decimates the livelihoods of small scale farmers. It exports rural jobs away from Africa. The aggressive expansion of imported processed foods also negatively affects human health. They are proven to contribute to growing levels of obesity and diabetes in West Africa.

Imagine what African governments could do to strengthen their farming and food system if they implemented policies and programs that re-directed resources spent on importing cheap, often highly processed, food to the support of their own small scale farmers, and the localized production, processing, and marketing of grains, fruits and vegetables? 

Post COVID-19 investments should promote a farming and food system that is not only productive, but also sustainable, resilient, nutrition-sensitive, and not dependent on expensive external inputs. Nowhere is this more important than in the Sahel region of West Africa, where the farming and food system has long been in deep crisis. Nearly 30 million people are struggling to produce enough food in the wake of climate change and land degradation.

In the context of Africa, one of the best ways to bolster a person’s health and resistance to diseases such as COVID-19 is through nutritious diets. Recognizing this, Groundswell International and the Global Resilience Partnership are sounding a clarion call for governments to support actions to improve food and nutrition security through the promotion of “agroecology”. This approach to agriculture enables small scale farmers to develop a farming system that is not only productive but also climate-resilient, sustainable, and nutrition-sensitive. The proven innovations include better integration of crops and livestock, conservation agriculture, using woody perennials in fields and landscapes to ecologically increase the productivity of more diverse food items. The underlying principle is to foster more integrated and equitable farming systems that use species diversity as a source of resilience and diversified diets while reducing the use of harmful chemicals.

One example is Groundswell’s work in Burkina Faso, which was supported by the Global Resilience Partnership (GRP). Our local network partners are working with farmers’ movements to promote agroforestry, mixed cropping, rainwater harvesting, and composting. They are obtaining incredible results despite the water scarcity near the encroaching Sahara desert. With these practices, they have reclaimed abandoned land for farming and obtained up to 130% yield increases of millet and sorghum, while regreening the landscape and adapting to climate change. In agroecological systems like these, the use of diverse and native species bridges wild and cultivated areas, helping to manage pests while also providing vital pollinators with continuous habitat.

These practical examples, supported by research evidence, are the building blocks that provide starting points for a new political discourse about agriculture.  With direct effects on diets, pollution, climate change, and disaster risk reduction, transforming agriculture must become central in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic in Africa.

Groundswell, GRP and their partners and allies seek to persuade many others to become COVID-19 recovery optimists.

The Barefoot Guide to Surviving COVID-19

A mini Barefoot Guide Agroecology Series: Surviving COVID-19, The Neglected Remedy

The Barefoot Guide to Surviving COVID-19  addresses how people across Africa can weather the COVID-19 pandemic, and, in the process it debunks many of the misconceptions that exist in the food industry, provides real, sustainable solutions to the challenges families face in their pursuit for access to healthy food, and explains how families can start their own gardens.

The Natural Food Barefoot Guide Writer’s Collective, which includes Groundswell International’s Peter Gubbels, wrote the book. It is the first book in a new agroecology series produced by the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA), a broad-based alliance of civil society actors that are part of the struggle for food sovereignty and agroecology in Africa. 

We spoke with Peter about this Guide and what it can do for families in vulnerable communities.

Peter, tell us a little bit about your role at Groundswell and your experience with agroecology and sustainable food solutions.

I am one of the co-founders of Groundswell International, and I have been working in rural development for 38 years. For the past 28 years, I have lived and worked in West Africa, helping rural communities promote sustainable agriculture, agroecology, and nutrition. My wife and I live in a village north of Ghana where we have a small farm and produce our own food.

What can African families take away from the Barefoot Guide to Surviving COVID-19?

The COVID-19 pandemic hit everyone hard, but in vulnerable countries, high levels of poverty, inequality, and inadequate healthcare made controlling the virus more challenging. Nearly 3 billion people in developing countries don’t have access to clean water, and social distancing has been all but impossible for those that live in crowded conditions.

However, resilience to COVID-19 involves more than access to PPE. Healthy food is a must to boost the immune system. This guide is meant to assist citizens in the quest for nutritious, chemical-free food. It explains in simple, easy-to-understand terms why a balanced diet of natural, unprocessed food helps to strengthen immune systems, allowing a person to cope with and heal from infectious diseases like COVID-19.

You can find and read the guide on our website.

Agroecology: A Ground-Up Solution Empowering Marginalized Communities to Address Climate Change and Forced Migration

Environmental consequences disproportionately impact the poor and marginalized because they are excluded from decision-making processes that affect the places where they live. This has been true for generations, but today the stakes are greater than ever as environmental challenges, such as climate change, generate uneven environmental consequences on a global scale. 

Edwin Escoto, Groundswell's Latin America Regional Coordinator, visiting rural communities in Honduras' Dry Corridor.
Edwin Escoto, Groundswell’s Latin America Regional Coordinator, visiting rural communities in Honduras’ Dry Corridor.

People living in low-lying places, especially island nations that are just a few feet above sea level, are obviously vulnerable to rising sea levels caused by a warming planet. Until more recently, it was less clear how climate change impacted people living in environmental fragile areas that are susceptible to drought, flooding and extreme climate events. The Dry Corridor in Central America is one of these places. 

Recurrent drought and increasingly unpredictable annual rains have exacerbated the already difficult conditions facing farming families in the Dry Corridor. They have resulted in massive crop losses in these rain-fed systems, causing widespread food insecurity and increased malnutrition rates in already vulnerable populations. Thus, climate, and more specifically rainfall and temperature, undermine the livelihoods and food security of smallholder farming families in these environmentally fragile areas even though they have virtually no ability to influence carbon emissions in developed countries or environmental policies that could encourage carbon sequestration or climate change adaptation measures that could help them adjust to the new climate reality.

In the absence of global leadership to help marginalized people address this new reality, organizations like ours – Groundswell International – are working with rural communities to develop and implement effective strategies to address the root causes of environmental problems, as well as the associated issues of food insecurity, social marginalization, economic vulnerability, and forced migration. While each of our local partners responds in its own way to the unique people, context and challenges where they operate, Groundswell-supported programs everywhere:

Mother and daughter in southern Honduran village where Vecinos Honduras and Groundswell support agroecology, women's empowerment and youth programming.
Mother and daughter in southern Honduran village where Vecinos Honduras and Groundswell support agroecology, women’s empowerment and youth programming.
  • Work with farmer leaders to test and adopt agroecological methods and spread them to more people through farmer-to-farmer training, allowing these farmers to produce more healthy food and restore hundreds of thousands of acres of degraded land.
  • Empower women farmers to participate in savings and credit groups, improve ecological production, gain access to productive assets, and diversify their livelihoods, which in turn improves their families’ food security, incomes and resilience.
  • Strengthen local markets and increase farmers’ incomes through savings and credit groups and community-based agricultural enterprises that add value to locally grown crops.
  • Nourish vulnerable families by explicitly integrating gender equity and nutrition into agricultural programs. Our holistic approach links agroecological farming to family nutrition.
  • Support citizens to engage with local decision makers on enabling local policies, and produce influential case studies, policy briefs, and reports to facilitate sharing across our networks and with other stakeholders to expedite the necessary transition to agroecology.

In Honduras, Groundswell works with Vecinos Honduras to support family farmers to create regenerative food and farming systems that address these complex challenges. 

Watch our latest video to learn more about our partnership with Vecinos Honduras and how, together, we are empowering marginalized farmers, providing alternatives migration, and countering the effects of climate change: