As part of an Agrilinks blog series, Stephanie Hanson of One Acre Fund is sharing updates on the organization's work with small-scale farmers. One Acre Fund is an agriculture organization that helps East African farmers to grow their own way out of hunger. Learn more at oneacrefund.org.

Cecilia is a farmer in Lutacho village, western Kenya. She is twenty-nine years old, with a wide, easy smile that belies her ambition. She is married, and has just two children.

When I first met Cecilia in 2010, she was struggling. She did not have any source of income except her farming, and her harvests had been poor. She had not yet had her first One Acre Fund harvest. She would attend community NGO meetings in order to get some tea and mandazi (fried dough) and perhaps a small stipend.

In late 2009, Cecilia enrolled in One Acre Fund and took a loan for seed and fertilizer to plant her ½ acre of land. She joined as part of a group of farmers in her community, and they all received agriculture trainings from their field officer. The field officer, a One Acre Fund staffer who lives in the community, trains farmers throughout the agriculture season, and also collects loan repayment. One of the most important farmer trainings is planting. One Acre Fund recommends a planting technique that spaces seeds evenly along a row, and rows evenly throughout the field.

This planting technique had raised Cecilia’s hopes, as well as the good germination rate she was observing in her maize fields. But when she told me about her hopes of a good harvest with the land she planted with One Acre Fund, she seemed afraid to be too optimistic. She was in the middle of what she called the “hot period,” when the maize price is high and her children needed food.

Cecilia’s daughters, Anne Mutali and Elizabeth Nafula, were just three and two years old at the time. Cecilia was worried about their health, and the prospect of a great harvest in a few months could not dispel that worry.

A few months later, I visited Cecilia just after her first One Acre Fund harvest: Nine bags of maize on ½ acre of land. The difference in her demeanor was incredible. She was grinning as she told me about her plans to invest in sugarcane, which would provide an additional income stream for the family.

Most importantly, she knew that she had enough maize to store at home and feed her children for the entire year, until the next harvest. In 2011, there would be no “hot period.” Her One Acre Fund field officer has provided training on how to store her maize safely at home, without rotting or pest infestation.

Based on the results of her first season, Cecilia decided to plant one full acre of maize with One Acre Fund in 2011. When it was time to harvest, she collected 16 bags of maize.

Right away, she knew what she wanted to do. Her husband had been at home, out of work, and she wanted to find him a job. She sold eight bags of maize, and used the profit to set up a small retail shop in Sunoko, a nearby market. Now, her husband has a job: He runs the shop, which sells salt, sugar, juices, soda, and other small items.

“I wanted him to feel like he had a job too!” she said.

Now, Cecilia is on to her next project. She’s making plans to build a three-room house with a tin roof. Right now, her home is just one room, with a thatched roof. She’s often told me that she wishes she had a proper home, with a living room where she could proudly host visitors. “I have a vision of a new house, and a new life,” she said.

She’s started to accumulate the iron sheets that she needs for the roof (32, according to her calculations), and the poles for the structure. Meanwhile, she opened a savings account so that she can start saving money to purchase additional land. “I am now very powerful,” she said. “I am targeting to be a super farmer with three acres of land in the future.”