Food Production in Uganda
COMMUNAUTS is a social business in Uganda. It was established to produce sauces and jams from local agricultural produce with the goal of replacing imported products.
Madagaskar: refrigerated car for sustainably fished seafood
NEMACO is a social enterprise that works with fishing communities along the southern coast of Madagascar. It sells sustainably fished, high quality seafood products to customers in Toliara as well as along national road n° 7, all the way to Antananarivo (Capital), almost 1000 km away.
Fontana Foundation bought a refrigerated car for NEMACO, allowing them to transport the seafood products to customers and thus ensure the cold chain and the freshness of the products.
Read more: Madagaskar: refrigerated car for sustainably fished seafood
Agriculture in the Peruvian Amazon region
Since 2003 the organization DESAP (Desarrollo Sostenible para la Amazonia Peruana) has been engaged in projects in the region of Iquitos. With the project MI HUERTO (my garden) they support families with expert advice in planting a vegetable garden on wasteland. In addition, several wells have been built which provide neighborhoods with water. In 2011 the project MI HUERTO RURAL was launched, serving the families living in remote villages along the rivers of the Amazon. The biggest problem in that area is the disastrous deforestation of the rainforest. The project MI HUERTO RURAL raises awareness of the problems of deforestation and supports sustainable farming. Currently 76 families in 7 communities along the Tamshyacu River, a side river of the Amazon, are being supported.
Nob Bhutan – a company for agriculture in Bhutan
Farming is the most important sector of Bhutan’s economy. A lucrative crop are potatoes, which are grown at an altitude of 2’500 meters above sea level. Potatoes are harvested between June and August, at a time when no new potatoes are available in India. We want to support the potato market in Bhutan so that the farmers will have a sustainable livelihood and Bhutan becomes famous for the quality of its potatoes.
Najude Pioneer School in Nigeria
Nigeria is the most densely populated country in Africa. The Najude Pioneer School is located in the state of Kaduna, in the north of Nigeria, where no paved roads, no electricity nor access to clean water are available.
Lamjung, Nepal: Empower and enable women to start a business
Lamjung in Nepal is a poor, underdeveloped area of Nepal. “Women At Work Children At School” (WAWCAS) is a collaborative project which was developed by the ANIN Group in Denmark and Slisha, a Nepali NGO.
The goal of the program is to empower and enable women to start their own business and to send their children to school regularly.
Read more: Lamjung, Nepal: Empower and enable women to start a business
Fencing off land in Burkina Faso
newTree, a charitable non-profit organization, is supporting people in Burkina Faso to sustainably improve their livelihood. In cooperation with local families and women’s groups they fence off wasteland of about 3 ha to protect it from logging and grazing animals. newTree provides the material for the fences as well as the know-how; the local people build the fence and maintain it. So far 193 local mixed forests have thus been successfully established. They are a source of food and income for the rural population.
Electrification of villages in Madagascar
Stefan Frey, a Swiss living in the very north of Madagascar has launched an initiative to electrify villages using wind turbines. The project was started in 2007 together with the Technical University of Antsiranana and the support of the elea foundation.
Wheelchair Center in Ethiopia
Together with his wife Christine Oberli, Bernhard Wissler, a Swiss wheelchair expert, started a wheelchair center in Addis Abeba. Within short time they built a workshop for wheelchairs, training premises as well as a sports ground. Every year 500 to 600 used wheelchairs together with many spare parts are being shipped from Switzerland to Ethiopia where a well-trained team distributes them to handicapped people. The beneficiaries contribute a small amount of money according to their financial situation. In the fully equipped workshop the wheelchairs are being professionally fitted and in case of need also repaired. Later on the center could even become a local production site of wheelchairs.
Aliñambi foundation in Conocoto, Ecuador
In 1993 Lorenzo Jumbo founded the Fundación Aliñambi near the capital Quito to get street kids off the street. The foundation includes a children’s home, an elementary school, a bakery, a small carpentry, a sewing room and 2’500 m² of farmland. With the exception of the school, all activities had to be stopped during the crisis of 2001.
Bridges in the rainforest of Borneo, Malaysia
In December 2012 we decided, together with another foundation, to finance a pedestrian bridge in Long Laman that crosses the river Salan’an. The bridge was planned and built under the patronage of the Bruno Manser Fund and with the help and support of Swiss engineers of the Swiss Institute of Technology (ETH). The local people were engaged in building the bridge and proudly completed it in May 2013. A second bridge was built in 2016, which we financed. Thanks to the use of drones, the costs and construction time could be reduced.
The Agricultural School in Veredinha, Minas Gerais, Brazil
The Jequitinhonha valley in the North of the federal state Minas Gerais is one of the poorest regions in Brazil. A large part of the population survives as farmers, living of subsistence farming with an income under the poverty line. Because there are only few schools for higher education in the area and the ones that there are do not offer any practical education, many sons and daughters of small farmers do not stay at school after basic education, but instead hire themselves out as cheap laborers. In the project «Agricultural school in Veredinha» sons and daughters of local farmers have the opportunity to enjoy higher education in their native region.
Read more: The Agricultural School in Veredinha, Minas Gerais, Brazil
Bao Lac in Vietnam
In the very north of Vietnam, in a mountainous area near the border to China, is the district of Bao Lac with about 50’000 inhabitants. Ethnic tribes are living in isolated communities under very harsh conditions, with no infrastructure. Helvetas of Switzerland together with a local NGO – the Cao Bang Community Development Center (DECEN) started supporting these people.
Centro Tata Esteban in Bolivia
The Centro Tata Esteban is a vocational school for the Quechua Indians in the Andes. The school is located in Tiraque in the province of Cochabamba at an altitude of 3’300m. It is the only vocational school in a vast area where 23’000 people live.
ANH DUONG in Mekong Delta, Vietnam
ANH DUONG is a Vietnamese NGO in Long My in the Mekong Delta that supports the poor population with an efficient Microcredit offering and other services like agricultural techniques, training of para-veterinarians, protection of the environment and forests as well as development and creation of jobs for handicraft production. Over 1’100 families are currently using loans to build small businesses. Already 540 families have escaped poverty and are productive entrepreneurs.
Schools in Adwa Woreda, Ethiopia
After a trip to Ethiopia in January 2011, Fontana Foundation decided to help the schools of the Adwa District in the very north of Ethiopia to reach a predefined minimal standard and thus improve their learning environment. This standard covers 7 areas: basic school furniture, availability of water and drinking water, separated latrines for girls and boys, sufficient teaching material and even a garden with vegetables and fruit trees for practical training.
Fair Trade Company Pakka
Pakka is a company based in Zurich. The company has grown into a competent partner and service provider for organic and fair-trade specialty products from developing countries.
Orphanage in Haiti
Peter Fontana, the brother of Mario Fontana, and his wife Shay, who live in Florida, in 1999 started the Hope for Haiti Foundation. They built an orphanage at Kaliko Beach, Haiti and are developing many activities to provide a future for hundreds of children.
Choki Traditional Art School in Bhutan
The Choki Traditional Art School (CTAS) was established in 1999 by the Bhutanese artist Dasho Choki Dorji with five students. The school offers economically disadvantaged children from across Bhutan the possibility of studying the traditional arts, mainly thanka (scroll) painting, patra (carving), thag-zo (weaving) and tshem-zo (embroidery).
Reforestation in Cochabamba, Bolivia
ARBOLES Y FUTURO has been engaged with the local population in the district of Cochabamba since 2006. The purpose is to provide an alternative to the meager income in agriculture through forestry. Forestry provides new sources of income while protecting the soil from erosion. ARBOLES Y FUTURO supports these activities mainly through transfer of know-how.