Global Alliance for Africa works with numerous agricultural cooperatives in order to build community capacity and increase household income so that families can take care of and provide sustainable support to orphans and vulnerable children affected by HIV/AIDS.  GAA provides funding in the form of grants and training to grow such crops as sweet potatoes, onions, kale, bananas, tomatoes, cabbage, sugar cane, maize, as well as other crops.  The cooperatives sell these crops at local markets, and then distribute the profits to members of the cooperative.  Some members of the agricultural cooperatives that GAA has supported in the past have saved a significant amount of money, and have branched out into their own maize milling businesses, or have plans to start a ferry company on Lake Victoria or establish a home construction company. 

The agricultural cooperatives that GAA works with are normally integrated with safe water cooperatives, animal husbandry projects, and micro-enterprise initiatives so that each of these income generating activities or small businesses are coordinated by community members to support the cost of school fees, uniforms, more nutritious food, access to health care, and psycho-social support for the growing number of orphans and vulnerable children in rural areas.

Dairy farming, pig rearing, bee keeping, chicken farming, raising and selling goats for milk and/or meat – all of these initiatives increase nutrition and generate greater income for households taking care of and providing support to orphans and vulnerable children affected by HIV/AIDS in GAA programs.  GAA provides funding and technical training to enable households and communities to integrate local resources for their animal husbandry projects, and move toward self-reliance. 

For example, in northern Tanzania around the slopes of Mt. Kilimanjaro, GAA has worked with 12 community cooperatives to establish a very successful pig-rearing program.

With profits made from the sale of pigs, one of the cooperatives works with 30 guardians from a local primary school to take care of over 50 orphans. This same cooperative has also started to provide seed capital to widows and individuals affected by HIV/AIDS and to guardians caring for OVC to start their own income-generating activity or small business.  This is an instance of economic strengthening and sustainable community development at its best – local people helping their own community members not only increase income, but provide support to orphans and vulnerable children who need it most.

The main economic activity in Makomboki is tea farming, but a rising population and scarcity of land have resulted in severe land fragmentation and degradation of soil, making profitable tea farming an impossible feat.  Against this backdrop, GAA and the Makomboki Green Makers established a beekeeping initiative that has provided a much needed extra source of income for several households.  Unlike tea farming, beekeeping requires minimal land acreage and very little investment of time and labor.  Not only do these hives produce honey for sale every 3-4 months, other goods and services, such as pollination services (bee colonies are rented to farmers to pollinate crops), and beeswax (used to make cosmetics, candles, etc.) are valuable commodities as well.

The operation of the beekeeping enterprise entails two levels of management.  First, the organization trains participating households in the regular bee keeping activities. Second, the participating households must manage the bee hives accordingly.  Among a host of duties, bee keepers must check for signs of disease, keep other insects or creatures away that might attack the bees or eat the honey, as well as correctly extract the honey from the hive. This locally operated initiative not only benefits the families of OVC that participate, but the local community.  Small shops, village restaurants, herbal clinics, and local schools are among the clients of the Green Makers Beekeeping initiative.

  
A small business has been established to make uniforms for over 400 students in 6 schools in neighborhoods in Nairobi, Kenya.  This business is currently expanding.  There are 12 women in this business.  A total of 80% of the profits go to the women in the business and 20% of the profits are used by the women to conduct their own micro-loan program.  The program has reached over 40 households and supported over 135 orphans and vulnerable children.