In the quiet farming community of Umingan, Pangasinan, 35 farmers watch with breaking hearts as their beautiful, orange squash—grown with months of backbreaking labor—sits unsold or sells for unsustainably low prices. Children go hungry. Bills go unpaid. Dreams of education fade.
The Mount Amorong Squash Association members face a heartbreaking paradox: their success at growing nutritious food has become their economic downfall. Their bountiful harvests, once a source of pride, now threaten their very livelihoods as market prices plummet below sustainable levels.
When Abundance Becomes a Burden
These aren’t just statistics—they’re families facing impossible choices. Do they harvest crops they can’t sell? Do they let food rot while their children need new school shoes? Do they abandon farming altogether, losing generations of agricultural heritage?
But these resilient farmers refuse to surrender. Where others might see only waste, they’ve envisioned a future where their abundant harvests become the foundation of prosperity through value-added production.
A Dream Within Reach
Your contribution of $17,541.32 will transform their harvests—and their lives—by funding:
- A Community Production Facility: A 75-square-meter space where farmers gather to transform their crops into valuable products, sharing knowledge and building community while creating economic opportunity.
- Life-Changing Equipment: Machinery that converts humble squash into premium flour, noodles, and bread—multiplying its value and extending shelf life from weeks to months.
- Skills That Last Generations: Comprehensive training that empowers these farmers with business and production knowledge they’ll pass down to their children.
The Human Impact
This isn’t just about preventing food waste—it’s about preventing wasted lives and opportunities:
- Children Staying in School: When farming provides reliable income, parents can keep their children in education rather than pulling them into fieldwork.
- Families Staying Together: With sustainable local livelihoods, young people can build futures in their home communities rather than migrating to overcrowded cities.
- Elders Passing Down Wisdom: Senior farmers can contribute valuable knowledge to value-added production, preserving cultural heritage while creating economic opportunity.
From Your Heart to Their Hands
When you support this project, you become part of these families’ stories. You’ll be remembered in prayers of thanksgiving around dinner tables. You’ll be the reason a child completes their education. You’ll be the partner who believed in them when markets didn’t.
The Mount Amorong Squash Association doesn’t want handouts. They want the tools to transform what they already grow with their own hands into something that can sustain their families for generations to come.
Will you help turn their abundance from burden to blessing?
Your gift today doesn’t just buy equipment—it restores dignity, preserves heritage, and transforms lives.
