Take a look at the projects currently at the top of our list for development. We’re joining with local people to develop projects where each can dramatically change the life of thousands or tens of thousands of people. Cheetah projects are innovative, self-sustaining, community based and often women focused. They address value chain structural problems that unleash opportunity on a scale far beyond the investments made. Most remarkably, they leverage up the resources of the poor themselves, creating a vision for hope and a sustainable future.
Following is our list of Projects in development. For printing and external reference convenience, this document contains all projects in one file.
The problem of hunger is not a shortage of food.
Food comes in flood at harvest and more than half rots. It’s not preserved, stored or processed. Then the dry season arrives and hunger spreads. So Cheetah is establishing a chain of shops that teach food preservation, sell the required supplies, and coordinate micro-loans to buy them. Focused on women, it’s starting with home canning and will expand to pickling, smoking, drying, cheese making, etc. The franchise model will allow it to scale rapidly.
Most of the poor are farmers – real solutions engage them.
We don’t tell people what to do – we ask them what they want. Over half the world’s poor are farmers; in nations like Tanzania it’s 75%. Urban slums fill with farmers seeking a better life but not finding it. So we go into villages and engage. Historically, cooperatives are how farmers lift themselves up. African farmers understand the power of joining together. So Cheetah empowers communities with grass-roots organizing, needed investments, and access to markets.
Farm production must connect by a dirt trail.
Roads are limited. Most agriculture is done at the end of single track trails not suitable for motorized vehicles or even donkey carts. Cheetah has a team of world class designers that have created a unique bicycle that can carry 1000 pounds (500 kg). Farmers are able to transport their goods from the field (pushing on wheels – not carrying on their head) and then ride back for more. This increases their capacity at least fourfold. Cheetah is establishing a manufacturing facility in East Africa to be owned and run by local people.
Drilling wells is not enough.
The average African woman spends 6 hours walking 4 miles for her family’s water. Dirty water is the biggest killer on earth so it’s great that many groups are drilling wells. Unfortunately, the wells don’t last long before needing maintenance (25-30% in the first year). Repair costs are low but 95% of wells are never revisited after drilling. About half of all wells aren’t working. As a village women commented, “They only serve to remind us that we can never escape poverty.” Funded by the women who will benefit, Cheetah has a warranty service model to maintain wells at a very low cost.
Most people die from diseases that cost less than $5 to cure.
When we ask farmers how they want to spend their new profits, they want health care. Why? They are dying young. So Cheetah is working to link coops to village group health insurance, perhaps the first sustainable model. To make it work we have to solve other problems. Although there are clinics, they lack trained staff, equipment and medicine. Worse, half the medicine in Africa is fake.
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