Kellogg alum's One Acre Fund helps families grow out of poverty

By Aubrey Henretty

When Andrew Youn '06 returned to the United States from South Africa in the summer of 2005, he knew he wouldn't be back for long. The Kellogg alum had spent his student internship organizing community AIDS-education programs, and soon set his sights on a more familiar but no less deadly epidemic: chronic hunger, the No. 1 cause of death for African children and the scourge of their mothers.

"The mothers are absolutely inspiring," says Youn. "The things they do out of necessity are heroic." Mothers commonly work in the fields all day and into the night, doing their best to keep hunger-weakened children healthy, he says. Many families suffer each year through a three-month "hunger season" on diets of flour gruel because food is so scarce. Youn adds that Africa's population is climbing and its available farmland is dwindling: "In the absence of something changing, things are only going to get worse."

Just how much worse is anybody's guess, but Youn isn't waiting around to find out. In January, he launched the pilot phase of One Acre Fund, based on the idea that a small loan could enable a large family to lift itself permanently out of poverty. Forty of Kenya's poorest families, including 200 children, were enrolled and each was loaned an investment package — including seed, fertilizer, equipment and training — valued at about $240. Each family had an acre or less of land to its name. If all goes according to plan — and so far, it has — these families will see a 400-percent increase in crop yield in the first year and a 20- to 30-fold increase in the crop's economic value over the next five years.

The preliminary results are not the only numbers One Acre has on its side. Accolades and start-up dollars for the organization have poured in from some of the nation's most prestigious institutions. The fund was awarded $10,000 in the Yale Entrepreneurial Society's annual business plan competition in April and $18,000 from the Business Association of Stanford Engineering Students in May. On the heels of those awards came the 2006 SC Johnson Award for Socially Responsible Business and a two-year fellowship from Echoing Green. Finally, a very generous donation from the Kellogg School's Larry and Carol Levy Institute for Entrepreneurial Practice filled the funding gap three years ahead of schedule.

When asked how he won the confidence of so many seasoned investors so quickly, Youn makes it sound easy. "All I had to do was tell the story of the families," he says. "I knew that if other people had been there with me, they would have given anything they could."

One such family is that of a farmer named Gertrude, who has seven children. "She has had hunger in her family for generations, had never used fertilizer and has never produced a surplus in her life," Youn says. "Her half-acre field is now full of food, and our hope is that all of her children will never again suffer hunger. Her family's food needs will probably be satisfied by only using half of the food, and we will help her market the other half."

But hope alone cannot feed a chronically hungry population. Finding a permanent solution to poverty is a challenge rife with technical limitations and unpleasant surprises.

"It's like going to the moon," says Professor Barry Merkin, in whose class Youn and a group of students drew up the initial business plan for what is now the One Acre Fund. With Merkin's support — and his sharply critical eye — the team produced an air-tight proposal by the end of the quarter. It was practical, quantifiable and sustainable.

"It was," recalls Merkin, "the most classic example of what we teach a business plan should be."

For One Acre, though, all the praise and investors' dollars boil down to one thing: better lives for children. No more hunger season. No more flour gruel.

"It's amazing what these farmers will do when they have to," says Youn. "It makes our hardest days look like a piece of cake."