Anushka Ratnayake
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Anushka Ratnayake 2012 fellow
Bold Idea
Increase the harvests of small-scale African farmers by enabling them to obtain agricultural inputs with an SMS-based layaway platform.
Organization
myAgro helps small-scale farmers get the tools they need to double farm harvests by saving up for fertilizer and seed through an SMS layaway system. Farmers register with myAgro for their planting goal next season and purchase cards at their local store whenever they have extra money towards their planting goal.
Biography
Anushka Ratnayake is a start-up veteran for two of the most socially-recognized non profits in the past 5 years; first with Kiva.org where she created the Kiva Fellows Program and most recently as the Director of Core Programs and Innovation with One Acre Fund. She's lived in rural Kenya for 3 years and has lived in Mali since 2011. She's passionate about ending poverty in Mali and world-wide, for the largest group of people living on $2 or less - small-scale farmers. She received her BA in Literature from UC Santa Cruz.
