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Community Development

When we work together to develop communities, we can end poverty! It’s our desire to bring change to a community through empowering each generation. ERDO’s community development program projects range from teaching farm techniques and raising livestock, to building projects, clean water initiatives, microfinance loans, vocational training and employment skills. Learn more about our current food projects, water projects, microfinance projects and agriculture projects.

Working with community members and having them identify their own needs, we create solutions to combat poverty together. Our goal through community development is to empower the next generation of children and work toward resiliency and self-sustainability. 

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Yemen Triple Nexus

We’re bringing families in Yemen an emergency food basket once a month for six months. This project not only feeds families, but creates jobs to invest in community building projects and builds peace as families participate in trauma counselling and conflict-resolution classes, all alongside food distributions.

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Bangladesh Symbiosis

Alongside our partner in Bangladesh, we’re bringing families financial freedom through savings and loans groups. Women and men are given opportunities to start their own businesses while growing in community.

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Kenya Health Centre

In northern Kenya, ERDO is supporting the Namoruputh Health Centre to bring ongoing healthcare to 60,000 people in the area. The Health Centre offers primary healthcare, prenatal healthcare, ongoing nutrition support, wound care and so much more. Donate today to the yearly operational costs of running this important Health Centre.

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Haiti Food for Kids

Students at The Fortress School in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, often arrive each morning with an empty stomach. While in school, 720 sponsored children are given nutritious food every week. These children come from poor families where malnutrition is prevalent. With a school meal, you can help a child learn and grow!

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Breakfast in Honduras

In Honduras, we are feeding over 820 sponsored children each morning. Many of these children are from families who live in urban poverty, raised by a single mother on less than five dollars a day. The food we supply, alongside our partners, make a huge difference in children’s lives and makes each day at school more successful.

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Malawi Food for Children with Disabilities

ERDO is partnering with Children of Blessing Trust (COBT) in Malawi to help children with disabilities reach their full potential. A major part of our work involves providing healthy food to help a child recover from malnutrition. We are bringing supplemental and therapeutic food to over 600 children with disabilities. COBT is also responding to the nutritional needs of approximately 90 mothers of children with disabilities who are pregnant or breastfeeding, and also suffer from malnutrition.

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Bangladesh Tube Wells

Bangladesh is one of the poorest countries in the world. Poverty is widespread and most people live in very rural areas. In these small villages, families have to decide if they should work for the day or if they should travel to collect water from a nearby river. Collecting water often means losing income for a family, and most water is contaminated with arsenic. ERDO is installing deep tube wells in small villages to create more sources of clean water!

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Honduras Water Filters

Where many of our sponsored children in Honduras live, families do not have running water in their homes. They purchase water from the city. Most times, this water is not clean. Children often get sick from drinking contaminated water, which means they miss school and parents miss work. By installing household filters, we can help keep the whole family safe.

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Zimbabwe Drilled Wells

In countries where water is hiding deep below the earth, drilled wells are the only option to provide clean drinking water. A large truck with specialized drilling equipment is brought into the community where it bores through the layers of earth to access fresh water. It takes a lot of money and time to drill a borewell, but in communities throughout Zimbabwe, it is well worth the labour! We are bringing clean water to communities in need.

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Wezesha

This program in Burundi provides female small business owners with access to financial services and business management training from which they are generally excluded because of their gender. Traditional banks in these areas do not want to lend money to women because it is considered too risky, too administratively intensive and without sufficient profit.

Microloans give women the opportunity to expand their businesses, increase their income and better provide for their families.

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Archer’s Post

The families in Archer’s Post, part of Samburu County where ERDO works, are pastoralists. They rely on raising livestock for their livelihood. Around 73% of the population here live in poverty. Young people are having trouble establishing themselves and earning an income to care for their families. Since it has been difficult to farm, young adults have been setting up small businesses to create their own income. ERDO has been working with these young adults to grow their small businesses.

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Fluffles and Flocks

ERDO is bringing female farmers in Zimbabwe free range chickens and rabbits. We are providing these women with training on animal care and giving them business and marketing skills. You can bring food and an income to a small family farm in Zimbabwe today!

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An Overview of Our Work

Empowering men and women to care for their families:

  • Bangladesh: After erosion on former agricultural land, we’ve been working with 2,512 displaced women to start small businesses and form community savings groups.
  • Burundi: Working with 1,800 business women, we are providing loans and ongoing training in financial literacy, product diversification, business growth, family health, and basic literacy and numeracy to help women build their own businesses.
  • Ethiopia: Working with a local partner, we are helping war-affected women build sustainable livelihoods. 90 women are receiving business training and given psychosocial support to start small businesses over 3 years.
  • Kenya: Working with 200 young men and 175 women, we are teaching business skills and helping young adults start their own income projects. The main income-generating activity is harvesting dormant river sand to produce various building materials which are in demand in the area. The group, after taking care of expenses, are saving money in their bank accounts. The youth are also in clubs where they discuss faith, sexual health, drug and substance abuse and behavioural changes.
  • Kenya: 720 households are receiving livestock support in Kenya to increase food diversity and availability and diversify livelihoods. In 2024, 360 families received a female goat and 180 households received three chickens and a rooster. Project participants received animal husbandry, disease surveillance and marketing training.
  • Zimbabwe: We are empowering 360 women in 6 communities is Tsholotsho to raise rabits and free-range chickens, earning and income and bringing more food into their area

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Increasing food availability by training local farmers:

  • Haiti: After the 2021 earthquake, many farmers lost their houses, harvests and plantations. We are helping 100 family farmers, 430 people, learn good farming techniques to improve their crops and provided seeds and tools to sustain their gardens.
  • Uganda: Working in 3 areas, Karamoja, Arua and Kasese, we are training local farmers in conservation agriculture to improve the quality and quantity of food grown in their communities.
    • In Karamoja, 474 individuals have been trained in conservation agriculture principles and are now involved in making their own organic pesticides. They have seen a reduction in the number of wildlife destroying their crops due to their knowledge in various animal repelling mechanisms. This has created more food for households as they aren’t losing crops to insects like locust.
    • In Arura, 605 individuals are practicing conservation agriculture, such as crop rotation/intercropping, soil coverage, and pest and disease management to increase the availability of household food and reduce vulnerability to drought.
    • Persistent flooding in Kasese in 2024 has severely damaged food supplies.  In the second year of a three-year agriculture and livelihoods project, 602 people have been involved in self-help groups and 496 people are involved in farmer schools where they are learning financial literacy skills, how to have effective soil management and other techniques to create more sustainable food sources.
  • Yemen: In 2023, we started a 3-year livelihood program to provide training on agriculture and livestock management, kitchen gardening, handicraft and sewing skills and animal husbandry to 1,250 families, 8,125 people. After two out of three years of programming, the number of targeted farmer households who reported ‘acceptable’ Food Consumption Scores increased from 1% to 32%.

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Improving the health and wellbeing of communities:

  • Bangladesh: In the Rohingya Refugee Camp, we are helping establish Child Friendly Spaces, where children can access counselling and safe after-school programming. This program serves 250 children every week on rotation.
  • India: Washrooms and showers are crowded at the Girl’s Home in Prem Sewa School, our ChildCARE Plus partner in India. We’re building 20 washrooms and showers, and purchasing an ambulance to provide transportation in case of illness. In 2024 we built 20 washrooms and showers and purchased an ambulance to provide transportation in case of illness.
  • Kenya: In 2013, we began helping a small medical dispensary transform into a large Regional Health Centre. Currently the Health Centre cares for 12,400 people each year in the Turkana region and ERDO continues to support operational costs.
  • Working with local schools, churches and ChildCARE Plus staff, we are feeding children in Haiti, Honduras, Kenya, and Malawi.

Empowering men and women to care for their families:

  • Burkina Faso: 50 internally displaced individuals were able to do a 4-day training to strengthen their skills in chicken breeding. They learned how to build a healthy habitat for chickens, to make feed for chickens and to care for illnesses.  They also gained skills in marketing to sell their surplus chickens and eggs at local markets.  Income from the chickens has been used to buy clothes for children, school supplies, medicine, etc.  Families also reported that they now consume more protein in their diet.

Improving the health and wellbeing of communities:

  • Bangladesh: To improve family health in Kaligram, community health educators received training on preventative health and shared that knowledge in their communities.
  • Bangladesh and Tajikistan: Bringing clean water to communities, we installed 40 tube wells in Bangladesh and Tajikistan.
  • Haiti: To improve the Fortress School, our ChildCARE Plus partner, we’ve provided six water tanks on the roof that channel clean water into the school, church and guest house. There are also 12 solar panels on the roof to provide electricity to the facilities.
  • Honduras: In 2024, we installed 150 household water filters. Our three-year goal was to install 350 biosand filters in homes, 6 bathrooms in schools and install 6 large school filtration systems. Although we met our household water filter goal, we only installed 4 bathrooms and 2 large school filtration systems, as customs caused delays on our projects.
  • Honduras: We helped complete a community centre building project alongside Schools of Hope where ChildCARE Plus programs can be held, the church has space to meet and after school tutoring can take place.
  • Kenya: In seven communities, a total of 448 women and girls have been trained in menstrual health management. In addition, 70 champions were identified who are teaching people in their communities on the importance of good menstrual health.
  • Kenya: Using a church-based community transformation model, 24,865 people have been trained on nutrition, conservation agriculture, sanitation, hygiene, waste disposal, maternal and child health, and treatment and safe handling of drinking water through holistic health teachings.

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Empowering men and women to care for their families:

  • South Africa: Starting a sewing school, we have helped purchase sewing equipment so the first 20 women can be trained in the sewing vocation over a 10-month course. These women have made uniforms and dresses and will be able to find steady employment as seamstresses.

Increasing food availability by training local farmers:

  • Zimbabwe: Ending a 3-year project in Zaka and Gutu, we helped 950 families learn conservation agriculture, establish village savings loan groups, implement kitchen gardens and start small animal husbandry projects.

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Improving the health and wellbeing of communities:

  • Bangladesh: Working with PAOB, we helped install 30 wells for household and livelihood use.
  • Haiti: To improve the Fortress School, our ChildCARE Plus partner, we’ve helped build space for 6 water tanks on the roof that channel into the school, church and guest house. There’s also space for 12 solar panels on the room to provide electricity to the facilities.
  • India: Since girls in India often face barriers to education, we’ve helped establish a vocational school in New Delhi where 100 girls can take a Culinary Course and a Beautician Course each year.
  • Iraq: Alongside For Her Dignity, we distributed 10,000 dignity kits including reusable pads and resources on menstrual healthy to women and girls.
  • Zimbabwe: For over 8 years, we have been feeding children in Zimbabwe. In 2023, we fed 41,608 primary school students a daily school meal in 86 schools all year. We also fed 13,020 vulnerable children (below age 5 and teens living with HIV).

Empowering men and women to care for their families:

  • Zimbabwe: Providing small business loans to vulnerable youth and women, we helped families better care for themselves in a country facing high unemployment and extreme inflation.