Meet Dorcas!

32 years old, she’s married with 3 kids, her first born being 8 and her youngest 4! She’s been able to send all her children to school, something not all kids in Africa are lucky to experience. This is for a variety of reasons including costs being too high, the children are too busy working on the family’s farm or having to prioritise things such as collecting water which can be incredibly time consuming. Income for their family comes about from her husband’s small retail shop, and her participation in Cents for Seeds since 2017.

From her first 30kg seed loan, she harvested 49kgs of seeds! With this, she bought a goat, paid school fees, and the rest they kept for food for the family.

Her second harvest didn’t yield as well, something that is difficult to predict. She sold most of this yield, keeping some for food, and buying a hen with the rest. Despite the smaller harvest, Dorcas still managed to sell most of this yield to purchase a hen and also kept a portion for food.

In her third harvest, her most recent, she got 35kgs of yield and was able to buy a pig.

Her plan for 2020 is to sell her harvest and buy more pigs and also upgrade and buy a cow for farming! The cow will relieve her of the intense labour required in the field for planting multiple times in the year, and hopefully help increase her harvest.

She’s incredibly grateful for Love Mercy as the organisation also stores seed loans in warehouses to ensure they’re kept safe and dry, something that isn’t guaranteed in the homes of the farmers.

Aminoceria has been a part of Cents for Seeds for 3 years and have a total of 630 women in the program. Since the first wellbeing survey we carried out in 2018, their average wellbeing score has gone up by 5%!

You can read more about Aminoceria and the changes they’ve seen, both individually and as a community, in our 2020 Impact report.

To learn more about Cents for Seeds and the impact it has for women across Northern Uganda, watch the following video!