Happy New Year to the Global Seed Savers Family! We hope you are all staying healthy and doing the best you can as we all continue to navigate the many challenges facing our world.
2021 was a difficult ending as we watched all of our partner farmers in Cebu and throughout the Visayas Region get hammered by category 5 Super Typhoon Odette (International name Rai).
Thankfully, all of our partners are safe however total crop loss and extensive home damages is the reality for them all. In the coming months we will be activating our long-term recovery efforts helping the Cebu Seed Savers rebuild, replant, and recover from the typhoon. Thank you for your on-going support to ensure our partners can get back to feeding their families and communities in the coming months.
The GSS Team spent the end of 2021 engaging in strategic staff development and planning sessions and we are excited to share some of our key strategic objectives and plans for the coming year with you.
Key Internal Strategies
- Operationalizing our Joint US/Philippines Board.
- Establishing a Philippines Council of Elders.
- Investing in staff development for our growing team.
- Implementing improvements across the team including a project management tool and donor CRM platform.
We will also be launching a new website by the end of February!
Key Programmatic Strategies
- Typhoon Odette Recovery Efforts including; damage assessment, rebuilding, seed distribution for replanting, and establishing new seed libraries for long-term recovery.
- Focusing on Indigenous Seed Production and expanding our Seed Entrepreneurship Program.
- Launching a Membership Model in the Philippines: connecting partners to our curriculum, seed library starter kits, and networking opportunities in the seed saving movement.
- Engaging in Policy Advocacy to ensure seed conservation is included in local legislation that can set the stage for national policy shifts.
The challenges and opportunities of the last few years have shown us that our work is more essential than ever and that our model works! Working in deep partnership with local communities and farmers to restore the practice of saving a wide diversity of seeds and establishing community seed libraries is more critical than ever and we are excited to see this successful model grow and impact more communities in the coming year.
Thank you for being a key partner in these on-going efforts!
Seed Onward!