The Gideons Empowerment and Development Project

The Jo Shire Memorial Trust sponsored GEDP is a locally-managed subsistence farming initiative that conducts its operations in and around the village of Ramba, in Western Kenya.

With the aim of bringing food security and an individual’s sense of empowerment to the peoples of this small community, the Jo Shire Memorial Trust raises money for the continued operation of the GEDP.

Each planting season, the GEDP finances the sowing and planting costs for local landowners. The programme then provides land-tending expertise to participating landowners. GEDP programme enrolees choose what they do with the harvest and, after two planting seasons, they become self-financed and self-sufficient.

Our mission: creating opportunity and empowering an individual’s ability to act on it

It only takes 2 planting seasons before GEDP landowners are self sufficient

A project that is re-shaping a community

We have already funded 700 farmers and helped them go from otherwise inescapable poverty to running their own profitable business. Local farmers have become a close community built around the local orphanage. They share tips and work in close communion with one another.

After just 2 planting seasons landowners are made self-sufficient

After two planting seasons, programme enrolees are expected to finance their next season of planting. All programme applicants do, however, remain part of the community that has been built around the local orphanage. Ramba’s local landowners continue to benefit from this developing farming community.

Previously untenable land becomes an opportunity for empowerment

Much of the land in Western Kenya is fertile but made unworkable by the presence of huge, subterranean rocks. For the landowners who find their property affected by these rocks, the GEDP provides a removal service. The rocks are then crushed and sold to construction companies, generating enough revenue to maintain this service.

1. High Quality Seeds

The trust supplies each farmer with an acre of high quality seeds, fertiliser and topsoil.
2. Providing Tractors

Tractors are provided to each farmer, something unobtainable in this part of the world before.
3. First Class Training

The management of (GEDP) train each farmer and mentor them closely to ensure quality.
4. Highly Successful Harvests

Result: Record harvest of maize. Their previously dormant land is now providing an income.

Our team is a balanced combination of local agricultural and entrepreneurial professionals & internationally-based charity workers:

Newton & Caroline Atela

Founders of Gideons Orphanage, through which this project originally ran. Newton has a Masters diploma in Entrepreneurship Development. Described by many as a visionary and an excellent businessman.
Norman Mumbo

Norman was invited off the streets of Nairobi by Newton who told this starving young man, covered in the oil from street life, “this life is not what God had planned for you”. Norman went to Gideons school and then Uiversity. Now he works at the orphanage as well as as a coordinator of the GEDP.
Kevin Omala

Kevin is the General Manager of GEDP. Together with a hard-working team of managers, he supervises all the farmers’ activities. Kevin earned a degree in Agriculture Education and a Masters in Food Security and Sustainable Agriculture.
Elizabeth Venz

Founder of the Jo Shire Memorial Trust, Elizabeth has a long history of charitable involvement in Kenya. Much of the important work done by the incredible people at Gideons Orphanage came about as a result of her fundraising in the UK and USA.
Sophie McLachlan

Founder of the Awaken Love for Africa Charity, a non-profit organisation that provided for much of the funding that was used in the creation and development of Gideons Orphanage.