Vincent Ferrer

Founder

Founder of Accion Fraterna Ecology Centre

Photo: Wikimedia (CC BY-SA)

Vincent Ferrer is the founder of Accion Fraterna Ecology Centre (1982)[1], an Indian non-profit working on rural & agriculture, environment and livelihood from Anantapur.

Vincent Ferrer, in Spanish Vicente Ferrer Moncho (9 April 1920 - 19 June 2009), was a Spanish-born social worker and former Jesuit missionary who spent more than fifty years working among rural communities in southern India. He died in Anantapur, Andhra Pradesh, on 19 June 2009.

With his wife Anne Ferrer he founded the Rural Development Trust in Anantapur in 1969 and, in 1982, the sister organisation Accion Fraterna, which works on sustainable agriculture, watershed development, drought management and environmental policy advocacy in the Anantapur district.

Early life and education

Ferrer was born on 9 April 1920 in Barcelona, Spain. As a teenager he was conscripted during the Spanish Civil War and fought at the Battle of the Ebro in 1938, after which he was held in internment camps in France and Spain. He abandoned his law studies in 1944 to enter the Society of Jesus.

Career

Ferrer arrived in India as a Jesuit in 1952 and in 1958 set up a rural development association at Manmad in Maharashtra, concentrating on wells and irrigation for poor farming communities. After his work drew official attention he was expelled from the country in 1968, but was permitted to return within a year and settled instead at Anantapur in Andhra Pradesh, one of the driest districts in India. He left the Jesuit order in 1970.

In 1969, with the journalist Anne Perry, whom he later married, he founded the Rural Development Trust at Anantapur. The trust built wells, hospitals, clinics, schools and housing and undertook large-scale tree planting, working principally with dalit and tribal communities, women and people with disabilities.

In 1982 he established Accion Fraterna as an autonomous sister organisation of the Rural Development Trust. Accion Fraterna, later known as the Accion Fraterna Ecology Centre, has run a participatory watershed development programme in Anantapur district since 1986 and works on natural resource management, non-farm employment and environmental advocacy. The organisation's own account names Father Vincent Ferrer and Mrs Anne Ferrer as its founders.

Recognition

In 1998 Ferrer was awarded the Prince of Asturias Award for Concord, one of Spain's principal civil honours.[2][3][4][5]

Accion Fraterna Ecology Centre

Accion Fraterna Ecology Centre is an Anantapur-based trust founded in 1982 that works on participatory watershed development, soil and moisture conservation, and sustainable rainfed agriculture in one of India's driest districts. It organises farmers into Sasya Mitra groups and farmer producer organisations and promotes polycropping and organic methods to reduce drought risk.

Accion Fraterna Ecology Centre reports the following, on its own site: