February 18, 2010

ACDI/VOCA Announces 2009 Photo Contest Winners

And the 2009 Annual Photo Contest grand prize winner is ... Katie Skaar!

A big thanks to voters who cast 770 online ballots for their favorite photos. ACDI/VOCA Project Coordinator Skaar took the beautiful shot of boys walking next to a rice field in Liberia and will receive a new digital Canon SD 960 IS camera as her prize for getting the most votes. ACDI/VOCA staff in Armenia, Bolivia, Ecuador and the Philippines won the five runner-ups prizes and will receive flash keys.

Our 2009 contest was a tremendous success with close to 300 photos "showing ACDI/VOCA at work," which were submitted by staff, volunteers and consultants from Afghanistan, Armenia, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Egypt, Ghana, Haiti, Honduras, Iraq, Kenya, Liberia, Mali, Philippines, Rwanda, Sudan, Uganda, the United States and Vietnam.

We thank all participants—photographers and voters alike—for making the contest a resounding success. Check out the winning shots below!

Grand Prize Winner

Carrying the day’s dinner, two boys walk along an irrigated canal full of tilapia next to a swamp rice field in Liberia. ACDI/VOCA implements several projects in rural Liberia that provide training to smallholder farmers on how to manage their farms as businesses. These trainings allow rice, small-scale aquaculture and other smallholder farmers to understand the costs and benefits of their familial labor allocation, farm inputs and production levels to enable them to better manage risk and improve food security and incomes for their families.

Photographer: Katie Skaar, ACDI/VOCA-HQ project coordinator

Runners-up

A woman sorts tomatoes for Alishan LLC in Armenia. With technical assistance from ACDI/VOCA's Water-to-Market Activity, the small business achieved its first tomato harvest in its newly established plastic greenhouse.

Photographer: Lusine Ghukasyan, ACDI/VOCA-Armenia WtM Activity communications specialist

ACDI/VOCA's USAID-funded Local Business Development program (known locally as PRODEL, for Programa de Desarrollo de Empresas Locales) helped increase the production of quinoa, an ancient Andean grain, for 316 smallholder producers in Ecuador, resulting in a ninefold increase in annual average incomes from $60 to $572!

Photographer: ACDI/VOCA-Ecuador PRODEL

An egg producer with his hens in the henhouse built and equipped by ACDI/VOCA through our Integrated Community Development Fund project in Bolivia. Julio Zambrana’s hens produce over 400 eggs per day, which he sells locally.

Photographer: Cristobal Aguilar, ACDI/VOCA-Bolivia ICDF deputy team leader

Internally displaced Filipino women in Mamasapano, Maguindanao, listen intently to an ACDI/VOCA-trained community health action team member who is speaking about the benefits of family planning. ACDI/VOCA trains these members through our Sustainable Health Improvements through Empowerment and Local Development project.

Photographer: Jane Abdul, ACDI/VOCA-Philippines SHIELD Project

Eusevio Ticona with one of the Gyroland heifers he received to improve his dairy cattle herd as part of ACDI/VOCA's Integrated Community Development Fund project in Bolivia.

Photographer: Manuel Seoane, ACDI/VOCA-Bolivia ICDF consultant

Honorable Mention

ACDI/VOCA's Water-to-Market Activity in Armenia has provided a research and development center with a new type of the plastic greenhouse to serve as a seedling nursery for local smallholder farmers.

Photographer: Lusine Ghukasyan, ACDI/VOCA-Armenia WtM Activity communications specialist

An Alto Beni producer tends to the pigs provided by ACDI/VOCA as part of our Integrated Community Development Fund project to improve pork production in Bolivia.

Photographer: Manuel Seoane, ACDI/VOCA-Bolivia ICDF consultant

Two Malian machine workers are being trained by a mechanic from Thailand to make rice-threshing machines for use by local farmers. ACDI/VOCA works with local microfinance institutions under our Millennium Challenge Account project in Mali to provide new financial products and services to both this type of workshop and to the farmers who will buy their equipment.

Photographer: Doug Leavens, ACDI/VOCA-HQ technical managing director for financial services

ACDI/VOCA's PRODEL project linked Mondel, an Ecuadorian fine cheesemaker, with smallholder producers. With ACDI/VOCA's technical assistance in milk quality improvements and pasture and herd management, 300 smallholder producers are now selling their milk to Mondel.

Photographer: ACDI/VOCA-Ecuador PRODEL

During a training under ACDI/VOCA’s Afghanistan IDEA-NEW project, a tractor operator demonstrates to fellow farmers how the tractor can be used to harvest a field of wheat.

Photographer: Helen Palfreyman, ACDI/VOCA-HQ senior coordinator for community development