Myanmar Cyclone Relief - Update

A big thank you again to all who helped support our Myanmar Cyclone Relief project by buying a t-shirt and/or contributing your time and energy to the project.

Below is a brief update on what IDE does, and how they were able to impact the lives of 141,115 poor families with your support:

• IDE focuses their efforts on rural small farm households earning less than $2/day living in the most densely populated areas in both lower and upper Myanmar. Seventy percent of Myanmar's 36 million poor live in rural areas and earn their income from small-plot agriculture.
• IDE in Myanmar is using the market-based approach to beating poverty and improving smallholder farm incomes pioneered by IDE in the 1980's. IDE is helping thousands of poor farmers increase their incomes substantially through the purchase and use of affordable, income-generating technologies such as a foot-operated small-plot irrigation pumps, low-cost drip kits and innovative water storage systems. Innovative water pumps allow Myanmar farmers to grow vegetables into the dry season, and sell the excess in local markets to pay for food, medicine and school fees for their family.
• Last year IDE helped 141,115 poor families increase their collective income by 32 million dollars.

(Source: http://www.ideorg.org/work/myanmar.php)