Brentwood and Benjamins

Local church hands out microloans to family farms in Uganda to help spur the struggling economy and bolster the agricultural sector in the country

Patrick woke up one morning in his village of Pugwini, Uganda to an offer that would change his life.

A church from Lynchburg, Virginia was offering him and his wife $600 to start a farm to provide for his family and send his children to school.

In order to get the loan, he was asked to go through a few months of training to learn how to farm, but he was not able to go. He had to stay home and work.

PROBLEM-SOLVE — Microloans provided by Brentwood Church help residents in Uganda tackle problems they face in expanding their agriculture industry. Photo credit: Terrell lanier

PROBLEM-SOLVE — Microloans provided by Brentwood Church help residents in Uganda tackle problems they face in expanding their agriculture industry. Photo credit: Terrell lanier

Instead, his wife went in his place.

She went to the trainings, learned how to farm and brought that knowledge back to her husband.

When she got back, they started working together in their field, and now they have one of the largest farms in the village.

Patrick’s story is representative of many of the families in Pugwini thanks to a program being provided by Brentwood Church in Lynchburg.

Brentwood is partnering with Sports Outreach and New Foundation Community Church to provide micro-financing loans and specialized training to help families in Pugwini, Uganda start farms and build a fully-functioning economy in their village.

The program was born out of a vision from Pastor Aloysius, founder of New Foundation Community Ministries and partner with Sports Outreach in Uganda.

Terrell Lanier, Brentwood Church’s global director, said they committed $24,000 last fall to begin Seed and have chosen 35 families to participate in the program.

Each family interested in participating must go through an application and approval process before receiving the loan, but once they do, they are also put through a series of trainings that teach them to farm effectively.

“They go through several months of training about how to farm and the different principles behind it,” Lanier said. “(We teach) them the basics. One of the things they never even knew of is how to plant in rows. … In Uganda, they normally just scatter the seeds on the ground. After the folks complete the classes, they’re given the seeds to get started.”

Lanier also said each family is rented a tractor to assist with the first tilling of their fields so they can get their seeds planted more quickly.

The families are already beginning to see the effects of the training with this past harvest season, according to Lanier.

“The harvest season just hit a month and a half ago, and they actually saw a plentiful crop,” Lanier said.

“They’ve grown crops before, but again, they scattered the seeds, and when they do, the seeds intertwine each other and end up killing each other, so they don’t get a full harvest. But now, because of the training, we saw lush fields of crop.”

EXPLORE — Brentwood Church team members surveyed the wilderness in Uganda to evaluate progress of the Seed program. Photo credit: Terrell lanier

EXPLORE — Brentwood Church team members surveyed the wilderness in Uganda to evaluate progress of the Seed program. Photo credit: Terrell lanier

Frida, one of the women in the Seed program, had help from some of the other families in the community to prepare her farm and is now seeing how effective the training was.

“I think I will have a lot of income if the price remains stable just like I was told,” Frida said through a translator.

“I think I’m going to have a lot of money, and I’m going to use that money to send my granddaughter to school and take care of my family.”

When the families get their harvests and are able to sell for profit, they begin to pay back their loans.

Once these families pay their loans back, Brentwood will start the program again with 35 new families.

“It is a loan, not a gift,” Lanier said. “Once we get the full $600 back, we will go loan to the next families and repeat the process all over again. But the first family will be good to go in the future because they’ll have made their money to pay back, and they’ll still have money in their pocket to grow again.”

Brentwood has been partnering with Pugwini since 2012 and has sent seven missions teams in the last five years.

They plan to keep sending teams there to minister as they continue building the Seed program, Lanier said.

“We didn’t want to just give a hand-out to anyone because that really hurts people more than it helps,” Lanier said.

“If you do something for someone else that they are already able to do for themselves, then you’re actually taking away an opportunity to grow, so we make sure we don’t do that. You can tell that they have a confidence in themselves they didn’t have before because they’re doing something on their own. They’re seeing the fruits of the labor, and they know it’s their’s.”

Gee is a copy editor.

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