![Iracambi volunteer plants tree]()
Iracambi volunteer plants tree
Tackling the global climate crisis is a daunting challenge—but no matter the obstacles, the members of the GlobalGiving Climate Action Fund are building a brighter future for the entire planet. Over the past year, you’ve helped these climate champions preserve the Amazon Rainforest, build sustainable food sources, and more.
Next month, we will be announcing a new Climate Action Fund cohort filled with 5 more resourceful, community-led organizations facing the climate crisis head-on. If you set up a recurring donation to the Climate Action Fund, your donations will begin to go to these organizations starting on July 1, 2021.
Until then, let's take a moment to celebrate how far we've come in the past year. Here's just a glimpse of the climate wins that were possible thanks to the support of donors like you:
February 2020: Lekuru Church food forest is planted
Early last year, Sadhana Forest Kenya implemented a two-acre permaculture project at the local church and community outreach center in Lekuru Market. The team planted hundreds of food-bearing trees and added a large kitchen garden. Within a few years, they expect a vibrant food forest to take root, providing vital nutrients to the community and surrounding villages.
March 2020: Agrofloresta workshop brings new possibilities
Before COVID-19 lockdowns hit, Instituto Chaikuni offered a ten-day workshop that taught more than 30 community members the principles of agroforestry, a climate-friendly system of sustainable farming that mimics the growing patterns of the rainforest itself. By the end of the workshop, course participants and Chaikuni staff had planted three rich agroforestry plots in areas previously degraded by unsustainable farming practices.
April 2020: COVID-19 strains programming
When COVID-19 forced Iracambi to close to foreign students and researchers, the organization lost nearly 30% of their annual income, straining it to its limit. After an intense period of planning, budgeting, and fundraising, Iracambi shifted all of their education programs online and implemented remote monitoring by asking partner farmers to share the baby trees’ progress through photography.
May 2020: Waste turns into nutrients
Obrobibini Peace Complex completed the construction of three compost toilets. These facilities reduced the need for external fertilizers and are a crucial part of OPC’s hope to expand their site to accommodate future volunteers and staff members, ultimately allowing them to offer more training sessions and other resources to nearby residents.
June 2020: Striped friends are spotted
It was a thrilling day for the entire Sadhana Forest team when the endangered Grevy’s zebra (Equus grevyi) was sighted within Samburu, Kenya! The populations of these magnificent creatures have been severely reduced due to habitat loss and competition with other grazers for resources like water, but Sadhana Forest’s interventions directly help support them in Samburu County. These zebras are in good company as the team has spotted a wide variety of wildlife in the area, some of which hadn’t been sighted for decades prior to Sadhana Forest’s work in the region.
September 2020: Real Trees App enters beta phase
After more than two years of design work, Camino Verde launched the test model of their revolutionary ‘Real Trees’ app, which provides traceability and data for each tree the organization and its collaborators have planted.
October 2020: Planting season brings seeds of growth
With inspiration from a fellow GlobalGiving partner, Iracambi upped their planting goal for 2021 from 10,000 to 55,000 trees. This ambitious goal pushed the team to expand and double down on planning efforts, including building vital connections with international volunteers who will return to the nursery in the coming months.
November 2020: Renewable energy brings fresh water
After replacing their gasoline generator with a solar system, Obrobibini Peace Complex began pumping water for their team and community from their deep well without the use of any fossil fuel! Since people in the area typically drink water from plastic bags and bottles, this drastically reduced plastic pollution within the community.
December 2020: “Talking maps” shed light on resource depletion
By mid-December, Instituto Chaikuni concluded their third communal land planning workshop with the San Pedro village. In order to communicate the urgency of sustainable land management, they asked the villagers to draw the past and present distribution of the natural resources on their territory on a map.
As one team member shared: “The decline of their resources over the years suddenly became very visual and helped the villagers to reflect on their current practices, how they would like their future to be, and what will need to happen so this vision of the future can materialize.”
Over the coming months, Instituto Chaikuni will work with local residents to transfer these realizations into an official proposal to help the San Pedro community manage their communal lands more sustainably.
April 2021: Real Trees App is completed!
By the time spring planting arrived, Camino Verde’s team had completed the Real Trees App and started field training. Now, the team will be able to track all the trees being planted and create more transparency for employees, volunteers, and donors!
Our team continues to be inspired by the creativity and dedication of the 2020 Climate Action Fund leaders. Even as we welcome a new cohort of climate champions, the nonprofits featured above will remain hard at work. Each of their GlobalGiving project pages will remain open, so if you would like to make a donation to one of these nonprofits, please click on their organization name above.
![The rare Grevy's zebra sighted in Samburu, Kenya]()
The rare Grevy's zebra sighted in Samburu, Kenya
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