Self-Suffiency Greenhouse project https://grants.dudleytdoughertyfoundation.org/proposals-2009/100 https://grants.dudleytdoughertyfoundation.org/@@site-logo/sitelogo-75x75.png

Self-Suffiency Greenhouse project

Additional Information
Used for	Frontier Horizon would like to expand a self sufficiency greenhouse project created at the Fontanka Orphanage in Odessa Ukraine last year.
Benefits	The environmentally friendly greenhouse at the orphanage teaches farming skills; provides the children with a more nutritious, healthier diet; and, meets some of the financial and other needs of the orphanage.
Proposal Description	STATEMENT OF NEED Many of the orphanages in present day Ukraine were originally built as boarding schools in the 1950s under Communist regime. The Fontanka orphanage is a government-run facility which belongs to the city of Odessa, and it currently houses approximately 200 orphans and homeless children from the Odessa region. The orphanage provides shelter, nourishment, and education for children who may otherwise live alone on the streets of Odessa. Children arrive at the orphanage for one of three reasons: 1)Their parents have abandoned them; 2)Their parents are too poor to financially support the children on a consistent basis; 3)Their custodial parents or guardians have died. The children range in age from six to eighteen years old, and they are in grades one through eleven. After the fall of communism, in the early 1990s, Ukraine began the difficult process of transitioning from a strict socialist economy to a capitalist economy. During this transition, the orphans and the elderly suffered the most. Without family to support them, the children were (and continue to be) under the care of a government that struggles to learn democracy and sustain itself. While the orphanages receive some governmental support for food and basic necessities, much of their support comes from United States-based humanitarian aid organizations, like Frontier Horizon. At Fontanka, the food the children eat is often lacking the daily vitamins and minerals that they need. The food at the orphanages does not provide the children with well-balanced meals. Because the children live in extremely poor conditions, the orphanage staff is constantly looking for donors to meet basic needs—educational, nutritional, clothing needs, and medical needs. The director and staff at the orphanage recognize these issues as on-going needs, and they desire to see self-sufficiency projects like the Organic Greenhouse Project further educate children while providing for the orphanage’s financial and nutritional needs over the long-term. Self-sufficiency projects like the Organic Greenhouse Project are of paramount importance for an orphanage like Fontanka since the children can help sustain the project which will, in turn, help provide for the orphanage’s financial and nutritional needs in an on-going fashion. Last year Frontier Horizon received a grant to build an Organic Greenhouse on the orphanage site in order to provide an additional healthy food source of vegetables for the children, provide financial resources for the orphanage from the sale of produce and help develop academic and practical skills in farming. Orphanage students now have the opportunity to visit and learn from the project in an academic setting while older orphanage children can work at the Organic Greenhouse Project and receive a small salary. Students and workers learn of environmentally friendly practices as well as the health and nutritional benefits of fresh, organic foods. The project is so successful that they have outgrown the size of the original greenhouse. As a result the orphanage director wants to build another greenhouse so he can have one greenhouse that supplies food to the orphanage and one greenhouse that grows food for sale at the market. The cost of an additional greenhouse is 12,000 and Frontier Horizon is requesting 5,000 from The Dudley T. Dougherty Foundation. We have sent out requests to other Foundations and hope to raise the total 12,000 by the end of the year. GOALS Through Frontier Horizon’s Self-Sufficiency Organic Greenhouse Project we seek to: Serve the children and staff at Fontanka’s orphanage by: 1) Providing a healthy, diverse diet for all orphans and orphanage workers; 2) Providing vocational training and small business experience for the older youth (and the neighboring Odessa community); 3) Offering an on-going educational experience for younger youth and students to learn about the project and to apply it to their academic studies; 4) Making the orphanage more financially independent by generating on-going, predictable annual income and off-setting a portion of their monthly and annual food budget; Serve as a model within the Odessa community, at large by: 1) Establishing a self-sustaining, integrated, Organic Greenhouse that can be used to promote environmentally sound agriculture in the area; 2) Providing a training site for self-sufficiency organic greenhouses for other organizations or projects to replicate; 3) Providing Ukrainian consumers in Odessa with affordable, chemical-free produce.