NEW ULM – Educate Tanzania, Inc. (ETI) invites the public to join them 5:30-7:30 p.m. Thursday, April 24 from at Schell’s Brewery Taproom in New Ulm to learn more about ETI and their local support group, Farmers for FURSA.

ETI is a Minnesota non-profit organization that has its roots in southern Minnesota. Co-founders Steve and Jan Hansen grew up in the farming communities of Sleepy Eye and St. James and are grateful for their rural upbringing.

Steve Hansen’s father ran Hansen Distributing and were longtime distributor for Schell’s. Hansen recently reconnected with the Marti family at the Brewery. Jan Hansen was one of four daughters who grew up on a farm near St. James. She saw what it takes to keep a farm going and never lost the love of the land.

Steve and Jan Hansen were raised to value farming communities. In good times and bad, they saw countless acts of support as people pulled together in lives centered around agriculture.

In 2010, Steve and Jan visited Tanzania and witnessed many parallels to their home communities. When they returned, they co-founded ETI to partner with agricultural communities in Tanzania to promote economic and social development through education.

ETI is a professional, all-volunteer organization. ETI partners with the Lutheran Church in Karagwe, Tanzania, where 1.5 million impoverished people grow what they need to survive. The average annual income is $456. The farmers grow robust crops but lack transportation to get to market. They walk their crops to be sold at a market. Much of the harvest rots and poverty continues.

Together with Tanzanian partners, ETI established KARUCO College of Agriculture on a thousand acres, erected its Solar Array to provide power, and funded Micro-Enterprise Loans to start nine ag-based businesses.

Now the college and ETI are constructing Project FURSA – a food processing plant. Area farmers will bring their crops to be produced into value-added products thereby increasing incomes and providing greater family stability.

Recently, two of Steve and Jan’s friends, also with deep roots in southern Minnesota agriculture, agreed to chair Farmers for FURSA. Farmers for FURSA connects Midwest farmers with farmers in Tanzania. Mark Bruggeman and Randy Krzmarzick agreed to help make that connection.

ETI is in the top 1% of U.S. nonprofits with 95% of every dollar going to work in Tanzania. For more information, call Steve Hansen at 952-380-8232