Video Stories : The First Mile
(IFAD) 2006
The First Mile Project helps small farmers, traders, processors and others from poor rural areas build market chains linking producers to consumers. Through up to date SMS, database and internet technology, these rural business people learn to cut out the middleman and establish trading relationships directly with the right contacts both near and far. This is a long term project that will establish its sustainability as funding is gradually withdrawn.
Flooded Cellar has followed this project for three years and seen it develop - and at times, slip up - establishing an ongoing relationship with the project management team and the local farmers alike. The multiple reports produced around this project have aired on BBC, CNN, al Jazeera, Deutsche Welle and others and have been presented at WSIS in Tunis (World Summit on Information Society, with UNESCO) in 2005, the world's first Conference on Rural Communications, held at FAO in 2006 and the 2008 World Food Summit held in Rome.
The First Mile Project helps small farmers, traders, processors and others from poor rural areas build market chains linking producers to consumers. Through up to date SMS, database and internet technology, these rural business people learn to cut out the middleman and establish trading relationships directly with the right contacts both near and far. This is a long term project that will establish its sustainability as funding is gradually withdrawn.
Flooded Cellar has followed this project for three years and seen it develop - and at times, slip up - establishing an ongoing relationship with the project management team and the local farmers alike. The multiple reports produced around this project have aired on BBC, CNN, al Jazeera, Deutsche Welle and others and have been presented at WSIS in Tunis (World Summit on Information Society, with UNESCO) in 2005, the world's first Conference on Rural Communications, held at FAO in 2006 and the 2008 World Food Summit held in Rome.