INMED Partnerships for Children

Linda Pfeiffer is Founder, President and CEO of INMED Partnerships for Children. With a Ph.D. in anthropology and archaeology from the University of California, Santa Barbara, Dr. Pfeiffer discovered the power of partnerships while conducting archeological fieldwork in Latin America. Living with—and learning from—the residents of impoverished villages sparked her lifelong pursuit of innovative community-based solutions to international health, social and economic issues. Following teaching positions at the University of California and consulting roles with the World Bank, Dr. Pfeiffer directed programs for a humanitarian relief agency before founding INMED Partnerships for Children in 1986. In the 34 years since, thanks to Dr. Pfeiffer’s visionary leadership and outcomes-based approach, INMED has improved the lives of millions of children and families in struggling regions through proven climate-adaptive agriculture, maternal/child health and nutrition and youth development interventions. 

INMED Aquaponics®—a unique model designed, pioneered and honed by Dr. Pfeiffer and her technical design partner over the last decade—empowers communities disproportionately affected by hunger, marginalization, displacement, and climate change to become thriving hubs of economic independence and self-reliance. At the core of our solution is aquaponics, a combination of fish farming and soilless crop production in a symbiotic closed system, once employed by the Aztecs. Aquaponics produces crops and fish year-round at yields significantly higher than traditional farming with no chemicals, while dramatically conserving water, energy and land resources. INMED has adapted aquaponics into an innovative, turnkey package—INMED Aquaponics®—that integrates technology, operational training, business planning, links to markets and access to financing to eliminate barriers to entry and foster prosperity. We are working to leverage our successes in diverse climates to scale this innovation across countries and continents, enabling disenfranchised communities to build sustainable livelihoods.

In 2019, the United Nations revealed in a sweeping intergovernmental report that activities such as farming, logging, poaching, fishing, and mining are altering the natural world at a rate “unprecedented in modern history.” In fact, humans have transformed Earth’s landscapes and seascapes to such a degree that as many as one million plant and animal species are now at risk of extinction. The abundance of native plant and animal life has fallen by at least 20 percent, and climate change is already shrinking the local climates that many species evolved to thrive in. The UN report predicts that biodiversity loss will accelerate through 2050, compounded by cycles of drought and flooding fueled by climate change. The current coronavirus pandemic has heightened awareness of the critical need for local food production that can be effectively adapted to changing conditions, even where meager water, soil and space exist—mitigating the effects of climate change while providing for long-term food security and sustainable livelihoods. The Elevate Prize would be a crucial catalyst for INMED to deepen and expand its innovative aquaponics program, thereby realizing its vision of elevating humanity through environmentally-responsible, sustainable food systems that are accessible to all. 

Driven by Dr. Pfeiffer’s vision, INMED’s climate-adaptive agriculture and aquaponics program involves inclusive, sustainable, healthy food production to meet the needs of a growing global population and increasingly fragile environment. INMED’s aquaponics systems produce ten times the amount of high-quality crops in the same space as conventional agriculture while consuming up to 75% less energy and using 80-95% less water, with local materials and no chemical pesticides or fertilizers.

Through a combination of intensive trainings in aquaponics, seamless integration into existing agroforestry and school and community food growing and distribution initiatives, links to markets and continuous virtual and in-person support and mentorship, we aim to ensure that every person, regardless of ability, gender, background or income, enjoys a continuous stream of fresh, nutritious food to feed their families, while providing emerging aquaponics entrepreneurs with the tools, mentorship and connections they need to prosper as businesspeople in today’s markets. INMED Aquaponics®’ proven income-generation potential, especially for vulnerable populations, is the vital spark small-scale farming communities need to become fully self-sustaining and onto the path to a healthy future.

With ongoing adaptations of our systems design, INMED has been able to improve production, resource efficiency, and access to the aquaponics technology and to economic assets, including through virtual and in-person business training, links to markets and financing to reach vulnerable communities. We continue to expand our aquaponics partnerships with marginalized populations, including several disabled peoples' and women's cooperatives in South Africa, indigenous primary schools and teachers-in-training in Peru and Brazil, and emerging entrepreneurs in Jamaica (with expansion to the USA in 2021). With each new project, INMED is able to hone its climate-smart, community-based approach, leading to higher local capacity, greater access to fresh fish and produce, and improved food and economic security. Our work with an all-women's small-scale farming cooperative in Pella in the Northern Cape of South Africa hard-hit by climate change, is just one example. In an area with an 82% unemployment rate, the project generated dozens of jobs, increased the group’s average monthly income from $3 to $400, and won regional awards. INMED is well-positioned to implement aquaponics across South Africa: President Ramaphosa’s administration selected aquaponics as a national priority, recognizing its potential as a driver of economic development and climate-smart growth.

Millions of children in low-resource communities worldwide face food insecurity, endemic disease, malnutrition, climate-driven environmental degradation, and lack of education. Stark disparities in access to health services, nutrition, education, and employment persist, with lifelong consequences for countless young people who could succeed if only given the opportunity. These disparities only deepen for people with disabilities, women, and small-scale farmers living in poor regions hard-hit by climate change. INMED deploys its award-winning form of aquaponics and a unique implementation model to deliver inclusive and sustainable food security and livelihoods, elevating opportunities especially for those too often left behind. 

Our solution began in Dr. Pfeiffer’s backyard, where she and her partner—who had worked on prototypes for malnourished children in Bangladesh—developed a lower-cost, simplified version of aquaponics suitable for climate-resilient, healthy food production, built modularly to support expansion. We developed proof of concept with funding from USAID in Jamaica and the private sector in South Africa in 2011, when formal governance of implementation, environmental monitoring, and performance assessment began. Work is overseen by INMED's senior management and board, and implemented by INMED's local experts with advisory committees including departments of agriculture, education and development and private financial institutions.

In South Africa, we had visited villages where children were not going to school because their parents could not afford uniforms—and they had not eaten in three days because food money went to buy seeds for planting after years of losses due to climate change and drought. This shocking reality was the catalyst for our developing a simplified, lower-cost form of aquaponics. Requiring far less strenuous labor and utilizing locally-sourced materials, INMED Aquaponics® addresses the needs of the most vulnerable, including women who care for their households and people with disabilities. In tandem with its technology appeal, aquaponics is attractive to youth who face staggering unemployment rates and have become disillusioned with traditional farming.

INMED’s model includes physical and virtual training, mentoring, online support, business planning, and links to markets and financing. Our model also includes training and support for complementary climate-smart improvements to traditional agriculture. With our solution, the children we visited in South Africa are going to school and eating regularly—and their parents are hiring people from the surrounding villages. Our successes in South Africa and elsewhere show the immense promise of aquaponics to remedy food insecurity and lack of opportunity in diverse geographies and contexts.

Led by Dr. Pfeiffer, INMED is a pioneer in the field of aquaponics for development, with a record of success in adapting aquaponics technology to diverse geographic areas, from jungles to deserts in southern Africa and Latin America, and among varied populations since 2010. While there is growing interest in aquaponics worldwide, many systems are prohibitively expensive and complex – and lack INMED’s comprehensive model of physical and virtual training and support.

For more than 30 years, INMED has been building pathways for vulnerable children, families and communities to achieve well-being and self-reliance in more than 100 countries across the globe, with a particular focus on communities that are especially vulnerable to poverty, malnutrition and disease, including indigenous populations, people with disabilities, and women and girls. Our innovative adaptive agriculture programs, culminating in INMED’s unique form of aquaponics, are effectively designed to stave off food insecurity and malnutrition while building new bridges to education, employment and self-sufficiency. INMED’s adaptive agriculture methodology is people-centered and oriented to building long-term sustainability and inclusivity.

INMED’s Aquaponics™ model combines a participatory grassroots approach with access to innovative climate-adaptive technology and builds a network connecting small-scale farmers with mentor farmers, agricultural extension agents, aquaponic curricula, loans, businesses and markets. By working to increase inclusivity and connectivity across the market chain, INMED leverages our impact many times over: transforming the informal to the formal, the neighborly loan to the bank note, the farmer to the entrepreneur, the individual to the collective. 

As the Elevate Prize reviewers are undoubtedly aware, leadership in nonprofit organizations presents a specific set of ever-evolving challenges and requires a unique set of skills. Dr. Pfeiffer has led INMED for over three decades, growing core competencies among board members, regional staff and volunteers to sustain their engagement across diverse constituencies, competing program priorities and local needs. She has wrestled with how to responsibly grow INMED’s budget, staff and infrastructure to support all aspects of its mission, while assessing the risks of taking on new streams of programmatic work and setting ambitious yet attainable organizational goals. She has had to make difficult decisions about which programs to scale back so that others may advance forward, and how to sustain engagement from staff, volunteers, board members and donors who may have competing ideas about how to best move the organization ahead in alignment with its mission and strategic planning. Dr. Pfeiffer recognizes that INMED (or any NGO) cannot be all things to all people and it is her clear-eyed vision, strategy and interrelated program priorities that has ensured that INMED is laser-focused on the needs of the high-risk communities we serve.

It was the suffering of children without medical care and a belief in the power of partnerships that moved Dr. Pfeiffer to found INMED 34 years ago. While completing her doctorate in archaeology and anthropology in southern Mexico, she recognized the need to get the right medicines and supplies to the remote communities that most needed them, at a time when donations were all too often delivered without context, infrastructure or education. Originally an acronym for International Medical Services for Health, INMED today represents the continuity and evolution that is INMED Partnerships for Children—beyond delivering medicine, how to sustainably improve child, family and community health. With Dr. Pfeiffer leading the way, INMED began delivering on-the-ground, locally-appropriate health and nutrition education and training in communities and schools.

From the outset, INMED’s community-based program design and global information sharing were the foundations of its programs, and its integrated child- and youth-focused model of immediate help for children combined with longer-term development efforts, represents the basis for INMED’s current programs—including INMED Aquaponics®—across the globe. Dr. Pfeiffer was among the first to recognize the immense promise of this innovative technology and to harness its potential to change lives.

INMED Partnerships for Children recognizes that—in close alignment with the 2030 Global Goals for Sustainable Development—ending poverty must go hand-in-hand with strategies that build economic growth and address a range of education, health, social protection, and employment needs, while tackling climate change and environmental protection. Through the development of diverse multi-sector partnerships, community engagement, and innovative approaches to agriculture, health, education, and nutrition, INMED aims to help high-risk communities to break the complex cycles of poverty and become fully self-sustaining through mutually reinforcing initiatives.

For example, fighting inequality, addressing food insecurity, and strengthening climate change resilience through the implementation of INMED’s own unique form of aquaponics—combining 100 percent organic soilless crop production and fish farming in a symbiotic closed system that produces up to 10 times the amount of fresh greens and fish in the same space as conventional agriculture—supports several of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as well as INMED’s own focus on addressing the root causes of extreme poverty. INMED’s aquaponics interventions directly address SDGs such as Zero Hunger, Gender Equality, Decent Work and Economic Growth, Climate Action, and Life on Land, while empowering communities to increase food production in the long term through climate-resistant and environmentally-sustainable practices built to outlast INMED’s field-based interventions. INMED Partnerships for Children believes that by giving people the tools to lead healthy, productive lives, we can help them realize the ultimate goal of lifting themselves out of poverty and onto the path to a more prosperous and healthy future.  

Led by Dr. Pfeiffer, INMED Partnerships for Children developed its theory of change, drawing on lessons learned throughout our 34-year history of targeted international development experience across diverse programs. Our comprehensive reporting and evaluation processes have yielded insights that guide our current and future priorities for work across diverse constituencies and geographies and help to inform and cross-fertilize ideas with partners’ initiatives, specifically that:

• -Long-term opportunities for children’s success in life depend on the existence of strong families and resilient communities;
• -A holistic, outcomes-based approach is needed to improve the health, lives, and opportunities of at-risk children and families, and to address the root causes of challenges;
• -A continuum of care through direct services and links to other resources in order can address cross-cutting health, social, and environmental factors that influence children throughout each stage of life;
• -The power of partnerships responds to local needs and builds the long-term capacity of communities to adapt to climate change and other disruptive global phenomena.