ECOVA MALI is thrilled and grateful to receive support from LUSH Fresh Handmade Cosmetics Charity Pot program to create a permanent field office and training center in Mali. Learn more about Lush and their many wonderful products and programs by visiting their website: www.lush.com/charitypot

Creating a field office in Mali is crucial to the development and increased impact of ECOVA MALI. The field office will double as a permanent training center, where groups of Malians will come to learn skills that will help them promote their own self-sufficiency and economic development, as well as that of their communities, through sustainable agricultural enterprises.  As a component of our trainings offered at the ECOVA MALI Center, trainees will also be taught how to become effective trainers, themselves, so that they can then go on to teach there friends and neighbors.  In this way our efforts will reach the greatest number of people efficiently and effectively.  Our trainers will all be Malians hired by ECOVA MALI. Upon completion of the training program, exemplary participants will also become eligible for contractual training opportunities for which they would receive a stipend to train fellow Malians at the village level. 

The ECOVA MALI Center will serve as a training center and a field office to be used as a permanent base of operations.  The Center will consist of housing for staff and trainees, an office, a large diversified garden, orchards, an aquaculture pond, field crops, chicken coops, and rabbit hutches.  The Center will also serve as an operational model of food and energy self-reliance.  We intend to produce all the food necessary to feed staff and trainees year round, as well as all the means necessary to meet the energy needs of the Center through solar energy, bio-fuel production, and possibly wind and/or micro-hydro power. 

Initially, the Center will have simple accommodations and basic amenities.  Over time it is expected that we will be able to expand the Center as necessary to accommodate greater numbers of trainees, offer guest housing, and perhaps open a small restaurant serving nothing but food produced on site.  Incorporating guest housing and a small restaurant would create an additional income stream for ECOVA MALI programs and increase our visibility as an organization.  

The search for an appropriate site for the Center is ongoing. We hope to find and purchase the land by April of 2009. We will begin construction as soon thereafter as possible. We will post developments on the website. Please check back from time to time to look for updates.