Sowing the seeds

Being farmers ourselves, we understand the challenges of working alongside Mother Nature to produce a sustainable source of food and income from the land.

For many this is an impossible task due to a lack of education and the tools and resources to make it happen. An integral part of our business is our “Seeds of Good” rural development program to help some of the most impoverished people on the planet.

• Our mission is to improve the lives of people living in rural poverty. Every person who purchases a Sven’s Island product gives another person a chance for a better quality of life.
• We seed fund projects that focus on providing education, food security, conservation and water.
• Our program is based on the concept “if you give a person a fish you feed them for a day, if you teach them how to fish you feed them for a life time”.
• With every product purchased, Sven’s island will give 1% of the sale to help improve the life of a person living in rural poverty.

Why we give

In 2015, the population of the developing world is still more rural than urban: some 4 billion people, or 55 per cent of the total world population, live in rural areas and a large proportion of the poor and hungry are children and young people. For most this means living on less than $1.25 a day. The poorest households in the developing world may spend as much as 80 percent of their incomes on food. When prices go up, they must spend even more of their meagre resources on food. That means they have less for their other needs, such as clothes, shelter, medicines, school books for the children. And little by little, non-essentials get cut.

Everyday problems

Agriculture plays a vital role in most developing countries with at least 70% of the world’s very poor people relying on agriculture as their main source of income and employment. But a lack of technical knowledge, depletion and degradation of land and water pollution pose serious challenges to producing enough food to sustain livelihoods and meet the needs of those living in these rural communities.

Seed funding projects

Our mission is to provide the necessary resources to under-developed rural communities to become more self-sufficient instead of becoming reliant on aid. This is about building collective autonomies. With support from our community partners, we mentor, educate and develop viable food and income generating farming cooperatives that allow whole communities to prosper.

Our Partners

We work closely with local NFP partners in some of the most poverty stricken areas on the planet.  It is here that our grass root partners provide the necessary education and resources to improve the lives of farmers, their children, and their communities.