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WeFarm is a Google Impact Challenge Finalist

Improving farming practices; lifting families and communities out of poverty; improving food security globally: these are the objectives that have put WeFarm among 10 finalists for Google’s 2014 Impact Challenge.

The challenge, which supports UK nonprofits using technology to tackle problems and transform lives around the world, provides funding and guidance to all finalists but there’s an extra £500k up for grabs for four winners – one of which is decided by public vote.

Vote for WeFarm

Manifesto have been working with WeFarm to provide the best possible experience for users of the global knowledge sharing platform which aims to empower five million smallholders who currently have no access to the internet but who do have basic mobile phones.

we-farm-in-action

Around 60% of the earth’s population have no internet access, which means most farmers can’t get access to information that could radically transform their livelihoods. WeFarm helps farmers share practices and knowledge across continents and language barriers by harnessing SMS messaging and a network of volunteer translators.

Claire Rhodes, general manager of the Cafédirect Producers’ Foundation, explains how the extra funding will help:

“Imagine an isolated Peruvian farmer struggling to afford fertiliser necessary to grow more food for his family. Now, imagine if he could send a SMS in Spanish that was translated into Kiswahili and received by a Kenyan farmer who could share his method for making low-cost fertiliser.

This is a true story, which took place during the design and piloting of WeFarm between 2010-2013. With a £500,000 investment we’ll scale this impact across the developing world, introducing new users, languages and countries. We will make the technology platform more robust, secure and durable, ultimately enabling us to scale up from a pilot of 150 users to be accessible by millions of smallholders globally.”

We believe in the project and we’re passionate about seeing it succeed – that’s why we’re urging you to cast a vote for WeFarm before the July 30th deadline.

More on WeFarm

Read about WeFarm’s mission and history.

Find out how WeFarm works.

Check out some of the work Manifesto has done on the project.

See how user testing for WeFarm’s second phase went.

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