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Fundacion Paraguaya's Financially Self-Sufficient Organic Farm School
Paraguay: Fundación Paraguaya's Self-Sufficient Organic Farm School www.fundacionparaguaya.org.py/
Since 1985, Fundación Paraguaya has been providing micro-lending and sustainable training to Paraguay’s farmers and other agricultural workers, as well as to women and young people. Through experiential education, its Financially Self-Sufficient Organic Farm School provides a solid high school education focusing on strong agricultural practices, business skills, and entrepreneurship. The school's mission is to impart a practical entrepreneurial education to poor farmers, empowering them to achieve economic success.
The school is located in Cerrito, an area outside the rural town of Benjamín Aceval, about 46 kilometers from Asunción, Paraguay’s capital and largest city. Besides maintaining self-sufficiency, the school aims to give students agricultural skills, so that they can become successful agricultural extension agents, start their own food businesses, or teach responsible agricultural methods in their own communities. The school's second goal is to promote and replicate their model of a self-sufficient agricultural school elsewhere in Paraguay, Latin America, and globally.
To achieve self sufficiency, the school developed 16 sub-enterprises on campus, including a hotel, a dairy, a restaurant, and a farmers market stand. Each of these enterprises suffice as experiential classrooms for the students while generating additional revenue for the school. Thirty percent of the school's annual revenue is generated by Hotel Cerrito and its surrounding chalets which can accommodate up to 140 guests at once. It doubles as a conference center and a destination for tourists and travelers. Here students are trained in hotel management and hospitality. By selling products at the school's market, students learn food processing, packaging, and retail techniques. Using milk produced on campus, students vend dulce de leche, yogurt, and cheese to local clientele. In their interactions in the market they learn the valuable lesson of customer service.
As a community-based employer, the Farm School tries to hire its instructors locally and provides good salaries. The school has played a role in improving the local food system, generating nearly 70% of its income by selling locally grown organic food to local markets. It is also very conscious of its energy impact on the surrounding community, and strives to minimize its carbon footprint with its new solar energy panels and composting program.
