The Embrace Farming Equipment and Sustainability vision and mission is to help fulfill the overriding mission of Faces With Names by:

• Providing nutritious food for orphaned and vulnerable children and the families who care for them through Embrace Child Care Ministries. 
• Creating a stand-alone farming initiative that feeds orphan and vulnerable children and foster families who care for them. This initiative will ultimately be operated and run by Ugandans in the local community.
• Raising the level of agricultural competency and the capacity of the local communities, families, and organizations within the reach of the Embrace Farming Initiative by demonstrating agriculture best management practices. This will reduce hunger and poverty in local communities.

Over the past two years of Embrace Farming, through ongoing training and development, the harvests have increased by tenfold. This has allowed the children at Embrace to go from just one meal per day, to two meals a day, plus an afternoon snack. This aligns with our overall mission of seeing these precious kids to go from surviving to thriving, to fulfill their God given purpose.

Now that we have been able to increase the output of the harvests, we are shifting our focus to sustainability. As a part of this shift, we are looking for people who will partner and invest with us to create a sustainable program for years to come. 

The idea would be to buy our own tractor, disc plow, harrow, planter, trailer, shelling and milling machines.

• This would cut down on the cost we currently have to rent on all these machines each season and would also speed up our ability to get the fields planted in a more timely manner.
• Once the Embrace fields are done, we will offer the plowing and harrowing services we have been paying for to others, creating a legitimate source of income.
• As an incentive for using Embrace Farming services, we would offer free farming training during the year to those who pay to have their fields prepared.
• This is similar to community training we have provided over the past two years, but with people who are vested into having their fields turn out like they see Embrace’s fields turning out. It is a more focused way of impacting the broader community.

Also as a part of this bigger picture plan, we want to become a vendor for inputs/seeds and fertilizer for those we are serving and training in the community. We will seek to buy wholesale from Kampala, and sell to the community This will allow the community to have better inputs and fertilizer while also allowing us to buy our inputs and fertilizers at wholesale prices, reducing our costs. Between the field preparation fees, sales on inputs and fertilizer, and lowering labor costs, our goal is to become fully self sustainable. 

The management team of the Embrace Farming Initiative exists of:

Steve Swigert
Steve is an agricultural consultant from the US with 40+ years of experience dealing with farm management issues. After 25 years consulting with the Noble Foundation, Steve retired to spend six years developing the agricultural operations utilizing the 65,000 acres of the Choctaw Nation in Oklahoma. Presently, Steve is in ministry serving the customers and employees of Great Plains Kubota. Steve has spent the last 10 years working on several projects in Uganda that include providing food for the 3000+ orphan children at Watoto child-care facilities, while at the same time raising the agricultural skills levels of the Ugandan people.

Mike Hafner
Mike retired from John Deere Company after 39 years of service. He is one of the Co-Founders and the former Executive Director of Field of Hope, an agriculture development nonprofit founded in 2011.

Mike’s work with Field of Hope included setting up a large, church-operated drip irrigation garden for vegetables and fruits as well as assisting a church ag ministry in expanding their mechanization outreach. Drip irrigation gardens were implemented in four other orphan care centers to help feed children at the centers. Work has included partnering with an agriculture training development provider to produce a full complement of teacher’s guides for the four years of ag secondary education. Leadership development of Ugandan talent is a passion for Mike. Field of Hope has begun offering scholarships to qualified Ugandan students.

Eric Mills
Eric serves as the President of Faces With Names International. He holds a Masters of Divinity degree from Asbury Theological Seminary and is an ordained pastor. Eric also serves as the US Pastoral Director for Orphan Sunday & Stand Sunday with the Christian Alliance for Orphans.
As a result of the adoption journey, Eric and his wife pursued bringing their daughter home from China. Eric’s role as an Outreach Pastor has provided an opportunity to work directly with those serving orphans in China, Burma, Nepal, Zambia, and Swaziland. That work allowed the start of an orphan care ministry at their church; God began to stir their hearts toward a greater role in the orphan care movement.
As a result of all these experiences, Faces With Names International was launched, with a mission to help orphans and widows move beyond a life of survival and allow them to thrive, to fulfill their God- given purposes. The vision of FWNI is intended to be personal for every individual; it says, “To allow you the opportunity to care for orphans and widows in their distress.” Eric’s heart and desire is to provide practical, holistic, and sustainable strategies to give a hope and a future to all we serve.
Eric and Susan currently reside in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, with their son, Reagan, and daughters Katelyn and Hope.