ECHO: Networking Global Hunger Solutions


Consider making a gift in honor of your friends and loved ones that sustains life. When you choose to send a gift to ECHO, we will mail a special card informing your loved ones of your donation made in their honor. 1.) Chose from one of four options of gifts that sustain (details below): 2.) Complete the order form on the secure donation webpage with both your billing address and the address of the honoree (Under Optional: In Honor of or In Memory of) 3.) We will send a receipt for the donation to you and special gift card to your friends or loved ones notifying them of the gift made to help provide long term solutions to hunger.
	Give a Gift to Introduce a New Crop ECHO’s seedbank houses one of the world’s most unique collection of crops, plants, and multipurpose trees that show promise of producing nutritious food under difficult conditions. After having been grown and harvested from ECHO’s Global Farm, each seed variety is cleaned, stored and then tested for germination rates. Seeds are then sanitized and packaged to be shipped throughout the world as a potential new food source in developing countries. Each packet of seed is accompanied with the education material on how to cultivate, harvest and prepare as food.
	$25 U.S. Will help to cover the costs of introducing a new crop into a poor farming community overseas.
	Give a Gift of a Tree Each year ECHO exports grafted fruit trees throughout developing countries such as Madagascar, Bolivia, Honduras, Congo, and Haiti. These particular fruit and multipurpose trees have been developed for improved stock and commercial quality. ECHO’s nursery has access to a wide variety of superior fruit trees and food producing plants brought into the U.S. from around the world by various collectors and USDA research stations. By cleaning the soil from the roots and packaging the plants in silica gel, new trees can be shipped around the world with high survival rates. For many poor farmers, having access to new varieties of fruit trees can have profound impact on their lives. Both early and late bearing fruit trees alone can extend the growing season in many parts of the world where variety options are limited or non-existent.
	$50 U.S. will help send one of these special trees overseas to provide an improved source for food and nutrition for generations to come.
	Give a Gift of Education ECHO is committed to training and educating a future generation of agricultural development workers and missionaries who are committed to reaching the poor with sustainable solutions to hunger. Students are made up of a variety backgrounds including college graduates, agriculturalists, missionaries and development workers visiting from overseas assignments. The education and training program, which takes place at its global farm in North Fort Myers is both academic and handson in its scope. Students who have been trained at ECHO then move on to overseas assignments where they multiply their new found knowledge and skills to other community trainers throughout the world. This program of “training the trainer” has resulted in countless lives being impacted with sustainable hunger solutions.
	$100 U.S. will help to provide training for a student who wants to make a long term difference in the lives of the poor.
	Give a Gift of a Book One of the greatest gifts that ECHO provides to the developing world is knowledge. Over the past 26 years we have assembled a unique collection of hard to find books, journals, and relevant plant files invaluable to small scale farmers in the tropics. This collection of information focuses on both adaptive research as well as useful techniques for food production and utilization of affordable technologies. As funds allow, ECHO reproduces many of these books and educational material in different languages to be sent overseas in either print form or compact disk.
	$40 U.S.Helps to cover the costs of producing and sending a book and education material overseas.
	Alternative Christmas Ornament This year we are featuring the third in a series of hand-crafted Christmas Tree Ornaments when you give a gift of $25 or more. Each tree has been hand-crafted by one of ECHO’s dedicated volunteers and decorated with red sequins to represent an apple tree. In the early 1980’s,ECHO helped to change a poor farming community in Honduras by sending a box of grafted Dorsett Apple Trees along with informational guides on how to cause the apple tree to produce significant amounts of fruit in the tropics. Within a few years, the original 1,000 apple trees were multiplied into 250,000 trees. For years to come, this apple orchard and the educational guides helped to improve the economic welfare of several surrounding communities in Honduras.