Social Citizen Sighting: Rocco Falconer

This interview is part of our "Social Citizen Sightings" series, in which we highlight how people are using their creativity, idealism, and digital fluency to support their causes every day. In 2008, Rocco Falconer planted a seed in Sierra Leone and from it grew the organization Planting Promise. The nonprofit provides an opportunity for local people from Sierra Leone to provide for their families and communities by linking education with profit-making enterprises. At the age of 22, Falconer is not only the founder and CEO of this organization, but he is making a difference in the lives of thousands.

1)      What drove you to start Planting Promise?

Falconer:  Travelling to some of the poorest parts of the world made me aware of two things. Firstly, how awful, and also unfair poverty is. The second was the inadequacy of the responses by people trying to help. NGOs, with the best intentions, didn’t seem wholly relevant to the problems they faced. They weren’t making the real and lasting change Africa really needs.

This dissatisfaction stayed with me when I travelled to Sierra Leone in June 2008. I didn’t go with a plan to start a project; I just wanted to see what Sierra Leone was like. When I arrived I was struck by the poverty: the highest infant mortality in the world, desperate inadequacy of the education services; huge unemployment. But on the other hand I saw the enormous opportunity amongst the poverty: a huge number of people willing and desperate to work, arable farmland going to waste in a nation that can’t feed itself, and the most delicious tropical fruit that ends up rotting in the streets.

I met with a local philanthropist, Eddie Boston-Mammah. We thought that charity, or the provision of free services, was not enough to make a lasting change. It creates dependence and doesn’t make people free. But at the same time, there was a desperate shortage in the provision of free education. So we came up with the idea of running a school on the profits from businesses: making progress dependent on the success of the business would also be an incentive for profitable growth.

2)      The model Planting Promise operates on is an innovative one – what did the participating farmers think when you and Eddie first approached them with this opportunity. What obstacles or reservations did your team have to overcome during those early days?

Falconer:  For the farmers, our arrival was a bolt from the blue: we turned up one day in a battered old car. Some of these villages were so remote they had never seen a white man before, so the first response was always surprise!

There was practically nothing in these villages. Farming is subsistence. In a bad year they go hungry. And now, most of the young people in the villages are leaving to seek their fortune in the city, leaving the villages understaffed and depressed, and leaving a time bomb for the country.

So we said: farm for us. We’ll provide the tools, wages, seeds and bags. We’ll organize getting the equipment in, and the crops out. We’ll give you 22% of the profits. The rest, we’ll use to fund our schools. And we’ll try to bring education and genuine economic opportunity into the villages in return.

Almost universally, the people we asked were delighted. We were offering income, and uses for their land that would otherwise go to waste. We offered prospects for the future and made commitments to helping their children.

3)      Can you highlight some of the progress that Planting Promise has made since it first started?

Falconer:  It has been a tough journey; we’ve lacked equipment, skills, funds, expertise. We’ve bootstrapped our way through, and because farming is quite a slow game, when you make a mistake you pay for it over months and months.

But our business is bringing prosperity to the villages. More importantly it’s bringing aspiration and education. We started in June 2008 with nothing. It was me and Eddie, and we hopped into taxis and drove around Freetown discussing the best way to make a lasting change.

• We’ve gone from one school to four schools: from 160 children being educated every day by Planting Promise, to 550.
• We’ve got an adult education center that teaches illiterate women literacy, numeracy and vocational skills.
• We’re building a secondary school so that our primary school children have a place to go after they finish.
• We’ve started three major businesses to fund the running costs of our schools.
• From one small farm, we’ve gone to six large farms. We farm the two major staples, rice and cassava, and we’ve just laid down our newest farm of peppers, chillies, okra, aubergine and cucumbers.
• We’ve started a food processing factory outside the capital, Freetown, to add value to our crops, give us a permanent source of income all year round, and to allow us to produce more nutritional food sources for the Freetown market.
• We have an internet café and computer learning center in Freetown to generate profits.

4)      What advice would you give to other young individuals who seek to create change either on a small or large scale, in their own neighborhoods or internationally?

Falconer:  The most important piece of advice is that nothing beats optimism! You’ve got to keep your spirits up, because you will fail and you’ve got to learn to bounce back, even though it’s often difficult. Cliched, but true!

So what I would say to a young person is be prepared to explore, be prepared to go down lots of roads and accept that some of them will be cul-de-sacs! But as long as you keep your mind fixed on what might be possible, and approach problems with humility as well as enough strength in your own convictions that you can drive change; then, as I have learnt from those I help and those that help me: nothing is impossible!  

5)      What are your goals for 2011 and beyond? How can people support Planting Promise?

Falconer:  2011 should be a very big year for us. We’re on course to be fully financially sustainable by the end of it, meaning we would not rely on donations to fund any of the payments we make to our teachers.

The most important item on our agenda at the moment is to complete the building of our first ever Secondary School. There are only three free secondary schools in the whole of Sierra Leone, and ours would be the fourth.

To learn how you can support the efforts of Planting Promise visit its website or Facebook page.