Kageno will train 50 severely impoverished individuals to cultivate and use bamboo, a fast-growing renewable resource and environmentally-friendly alternative to wood, to generate sustainable income.
Located on the border of Nyungwe National Park, Banda has extremely limited access to food, water, sanitation, healthcare, and employment. Desperate people turn to the forest for survival, and poaching and deforestation are destroying the forest at a non-sustainable rate. Cultivating bamboo for use as a craft making and building material will protect the community's most important natural resources, while also generating sustainable incomes for at least 35 community members.
By hiring local builders to construct a greenhouse, and by training local people on the cultivation of bamboo as a building and craft-making material, Kageno will diversify the Banda economy, create 50 jobs, and protect the Nyungwe National Forest.
The project will directly train 35 individuals, including 30 women in bamboo craft production and 5 individuals in bamboo cultivation, and benefit thousands more by making more visible the link between conservation practices and income generation.
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
