In 1974, Plenty International™ was founded as an outreach effort of the Farm Community to express our desire to make a difference in the world.
The Farm is an intentional community, based upon non-violence and non-sectarian spiritual principles in middle Tennessee. It was founded in 1971.
At first, Plenty volunteers distributed The Farm’s crop surpluses to the local rural poor; expanding later as we discovered pockets of hunger in urban Nashville, Memphis, Chicago, rural Alabama and Mississippi.
Sometimes we would learn of a tornado or flash flood hitting a town in the midwest, and we would send volunteers to assist in the clean-up and reconstruction.
When a devastating earthquake struck Guatemala in 1976, killing 23,000 and leaving a million homeless, the Farm decided to go and see if there was anything its young Plenty organization could do to help.
At the time, that earthquake was the greatest natural disaster in the history of Central America. Initially Plenty committed crews of carpenters to assist the Mayans in their efforts to rebuild. Over the next four years Plenty volunteers built over twelve hundred houses, 12 schools and several public buildings. Other projects in health and agriculture also took place.
About 200 Plenty volunteers served in Guatemala, working side by side with Guatemalan farmers and villagers. There many of us witnessed for the first time the depth of poverty in the world.
Since that first large scale effort, Plenty has worked in 21 countries, linking community-based projects with skilled volunteers in appropriate technology, agriculture, nutrition, micro-enterprise development, health care, and crafts marketing. Over time, some projects have developed into long-term partnerships.
Plenty is a not-for-profit organization that was created to help protect and share the world’s abundance and knowledge for the benefit of all.
