ACEARD Multi-Purpose Cooperative Society Limited is an initiative of African Centre for Environment, Agriculture & Rural Development. Founded for the purpose of promoting the welfare of members and actualization of ACEARD self-help projects in Africa.
The self-help project which targets rural areas, help the community people identify viable areas of livelihood options to improve their living condition, build capacity of the youths and women in the areas of animal production, feed formulation for different classes and types of animals, agro-marketing, market promotions, financial management, book keeping, group formation and dynamics of production among others topical issues in business management.
Trainings are designed for beneficiaries and after the training the participants are enrolled in the cooperative where they will be grouped and empowered to start up an agricultural enterprise of their choice. The members of the group will provide the manpower for the business operation and they will save the profit accrued. At the end of the cycle, the profit from the business are shared among the members of the group.
Members of each group will be responsible for labour provision and site as their non-cash contribution, while the cooperative will provide the inputs for the business as well as market linkages to off-takers to encourage business activity.
Each of the group will be given the financial support based on their business proposal which will be subjected to further scrutiny by expert’s from the Cooperative. Once such business plan is approved, the group members which must have completed their documentation procedures with the cooperative, and with a valid account with designated bank, will be funded through the service providers which must have been sorted for through local competitive bidding (LCB).
The service providers will therefore be contracted to deliver the desired inputs to the group and be issued a letter of job delivery by the group which he, the service providers will forward same to the Cooperative. The Cooperative will further ascertain the completion of the job via physical inspection before completing the transaction.
Once the business starts, the Cooperative will ensure strict compliance with guidelines of operation by embarking on a thorough and routine inspection of all sites to evaluate performance of both members and the business. During such visits, the team is expected to have indebt talk and discussion with the group to know their challenges and if possible, at that point proffer solutions to them to avoid failure. Such challenges are to be tendered at the review meeting for indebt analyses and solutions.
At harvest, the proceeds are to be shared among group members on an already determined scale/ratio. Each group will be expected to open and run an account called ACEARD USER GROUP EQUITY FUND (AUGEF) with the cooperative. AUGEF, is a token paid by the group to the Cooperative for replacement of asset. The value of the token will be derived after computing the total cost, spread through a repayment period of 3 years or production cycles or as may be decided by the Board. The Cooperative shall ensure that no income should be shared if the AUGEF account has not been serviced.
Through AUGEF, the Cooperative will fully recover every investment which will be used to empower others till the people and indeed Africans are lifted above poverty.
