Gay Lea Foundation
Founded in 2014 by Gay Lea Foods, the Gay Lea Foundation is dedicated to supporting education, poverty relief, co-operative development and community well-being projects in the communities where their members and employees live, work and play – and in developing countries around the world.
Current Project
The Green Schools Network project is taking place in the Kasungu district of Malawi. It currently impacts 5 primary schools and helps educate them on the benefits of permaculture and provides them with tree and vegetable seedlings for them to start their own school gardens. The Gay Lea Foundation funded the building and installation of a Rain Water Harvesting tank at one of the schools, which ensures that the students now have safe and clean water to drink and to wash their hands with, as well as water to use in their gardening. Read an article written by the Gay Lea Foundation about the project.
Past Projects
- The Ukerewe Farmers Field School Project (FFS) was a three-year project designed to improve the health, nutrition and economic well-being of rural farmers living on Ukerewe Island in Tanzania. The final year and a half of the project was implemented thanks to the generous support of the Gay Lea Foundation. Project activities were centred on building upon the achievements made in the first half of project implementation. Farmers worked in FFS groups to learn and apply improved methods of cultivating crops while diversifying crop production, as well as formalizing food production to develop income-generating opportunities.
- The Gay Lea Foundation also supported the Phase II of the Food Security and Economic Growth Project in the Benishangul-Gumuz region of Ethiopia - a remote and underserviced area of the country close to the border with Sudan. Gay Lea's funding supported the formation of two new cooperatives and the strengthening of two existing cooperatives, while also building the capacity of farmers and union leaders.