About Us

Seeds for Development was founded in 2007 by Alison Hall, together with 3 friends - Tamsin Miles, Julie Brennan and Amanda Giles, when, after hearing an inspirational talk by Ugandan businesswoman Josephine Okot, she had an idea to sponsor a farmer, in rather the same way you might sponsor a child through school.

Now run by Alison with Sally Varley, the charity supports more than 700 farming families in Uganda.

With no previous experience of Africa, charity work or agriculture, here is a little information about the two of them!

Alison Hall – inspired by Josephine's talk, I decided to put my twenty-five years of sales and marketing experience to some good! I live in the UK with my nineteen year old son, dog, two cats and two chickens.

Sally Varley – I am delighted to be involved with Seeds for Development as I believe the knowledge, skills and resources we have in this world should be shared. I am a qualified bookkeeper and treasurer of my local Fair Trade shop. I come from a musical background and enjoy singing in various choirs.

Whilst we work directly with the farmers, we do not have staff or infrastructure on the ground in Uganda and so we work in partnership with two organisations:

Victoria Seeds Ltd the inspiration behind Seeds for Development is Josephine Okot who is the managing director of this leading Ugandan seed company. Together with Josephine we devised the idea to support the farmers move from subsistence to commercial farming. The farmers borrow the seed which they grow for the seed crop itself (rather than a food crop). The seed crop is then purchased by Victoria Seeds Ltd, providing the farmers with income, the company with a good supply of seed, and food security for many thousands of people.

Having developed this idea, we now work with the charity Send a Cow Uganda supporting their farming groups, who are also looking to move into commercial farming, or to earn enough money to pursue other income generating activities. Send a Cow Uganda is so much more than cows. They run long-term education programmes and provide support to the most disadvantaged people in Uganda. Their programmes cover social development, organic farming and caring for livestock. We join them at the point that the farmers graduate from the programme and move into income generation.

Seeds for Development is more than just charity