I would like to divide this into a couple of parts.
One, how will we make the farming part of it financially sustainable or self-sustaining? We're trying to raise a little over $1 million to build a farm. We're going to start with 5,000 birds and scale it up to about 30,000. It costs us about $120,000 to provide pullets and feed for a year for those birds, so the initial part deals with fundraising. However, there is a large-scale commercial egg production company in Swaziland. Obviously, orphans don't have money to buy food so that creates a different short term, but that company has offered to help. In fact, they're currently donating eggs to the project while we gear up the farm.
They have a small I guess expatriate population that is looking for different types of eggs—free-run, free-range—and they will pay more. They're looking to partner with us in the project, and they will pay a premium for those eggs. We are also even looking in the longer term at an idea about creating a Project Canaan egg brand that we can sell at a premium. There is some long-term thinking on how we can create ongoing financial stability.
The other part that's really important is the human sustainability part. Ian and Janine do not adopt these children out. They're going to educate them and raise them. They will have them right through until they are adults. Part of that process, both for the children and for the farm workers, is to learn. If you contemplate the impact of the adults dying off, you can see that the skills of how to produce food or how to do carpentry or electrical work are all being lost, so there's a significant human education and vocational training that's part of this for the children, ultimately, and for all of the farm workers.
The impact of what they're doing at Project Canaan is rippling way beyond what the obvious benefits would be of the farm and the orphanage. We were sitting out late one evening—before the snake story arrived, which we'll tell you at some point—and we could see all these lights going on in the dark. Janine and Ian said that was something they're most proud of because they never used to see lights. There were a few cook fires, but no one had electricity. The whole standard of living is coming up. There's the financial and human sustainability on this project.
For the IEF, as we identify opportunities to tie in, every one of our projects is helping somebody do a better job of the business they have, helping somebody start a business, or helping somebody who is an entrepreneur. If I use the Hollard Foundation example—which is not a project we're doing yet, as it's at the conceptual phase—it's about matching training and expertise with a much larger vision for a bigger business.
For us, we inherently get I think that the sustainability question is imperative and that you have to work with the local people for it to be achieved. Whatever your project is, it has to fit with the circumstances on the ground, if you will, and you have to be adaptable to change.