Summary background.

In order to pursue their joint aspirations, the three organizations, RIDEP, SAPAD, and CIFORD have formed the RISACI Green Consortium. RISACI is derived from the first two letters of their acronyms RIDEP, SAPAD, and CIFORD. Two of the organizations operate in Tharaka Nithi while the third one, CIFORD operates in Meru County. The three organizations are passionate about improving the livelihood security of their main beneficiaries who are mainly women. All the 3 organizations promote ecological organic agriculture and share a strong brief that practicing agroecology and eco-friendly agriculture is one of the best ways to increase the resilience of smallholder farmers and pastoralists again the negative impact of the climate change crisis. They also believe that farmers must earn from their hard work, put money in their pockets and keep on improving their livelihood security.

Why have the partners formed this Consortium? What is the motivation for its Formation?

There are 11 Main Reasons:

1. To provide a forum for the consortium partners to know each other more, learn from each other more, work more with each other, and grow together.
2. To make the consortium partners do more than what they can do when they are working on their own.
3. To increase the impact of the work of the consortium partners at the community level.
4. To aggressively promote agroecology through soil fertility restoration and management through vigorous training and follow-ups of the small holder farmers and pastoralists
5. To promote rural agroecological business models where the implementing partners will be buying and marketing the produce and products from the smallholder farmers and pastoralists thus reinforcing the partnership between them.
6. To strengthen on-farm seed-management systems hence increasing the seed security among small holder farmers and pastoralists. This entails creating awareness about their community rights and pertinent issues in agriculture e.g., GMOs and the potential threats that may lead to the extinction of indigenous seeds. This will enhance community led advocacy.
7. To create awareness to the county governments in issues that affect small holder farmers and hence influence them to make decisions in favour of small holder farmers and pastoralists.
8. To enhance the eco-system management approach through holistic land and livestock management (HLLM)
9. To educate the local media (radio and TV) on pertinent issues that affect smallholder farmers and pastoralists and make them strategic allies that will help in the articulation of issues in favour of smallholder farmers and pastoralists.

• To strengthen various aspects of organizational growth and development of the consortium members. These include:
  1. Effective community and extension approach with emphasis on increasing impact and sustainability and increasing community resilience.
  2. NGO finance management and accountability
  3. NGOs management; governance; Increasing NGOs finance resilience and continuity.
• To design, develop, and implement joint programmes and projects for the sole purpose of benefiting smallholder farmers and pastoralists.