Forestry Training & Finance for 800 Farms in Kenya

Dear Friends, Family, and Supporters,

2013 has been a year of healthy growth and improvement for the DNRC.

We thank you for your continued support, and ask you to help us to continue growing in 2014. As the year comes to an end, please consider making a recurring donation yourself, and share our project with friends, family, and employers who might also like to support our work.

Our results for 2013:

• Increased the number of subsistence farmer-families we serve from 300 to 400.
• Increased the capacity of our tree sapling nursery, which now produces 42,000 new saplings per rainy season, over a wider range of tree and plant species.
• Installed 33 water cisterns - providing clean, potable water to 33 families - though our partnership with the Rotary Club.
• Established food forests (a woodland ecosystem with edible trees, shrubs, perennials and annuals) at five local primary and secondary schools (see attached picture).
• Hosted a five-day field course in permaculture, in partnership with Nyambani Village (http://www.nyumbani.org/).
• Hosted visitors and interns from GlobalGiving, the University of Wisconsin, and Wageningen University in the Netherlands.
• Expanded our staff, welcoming Fedelis as Outreach and Training Manager.

Our goals for 2014:

• Complete construction of our new office by March 1st.
• Expand nursery capacity to 50,000 saplings/season.
• Continue to build our partnerships with Nyumbani, the Rotary Club, and thre University of Wisconsin.
• Introduce effective income generation programs for our 400 farmers, many of whom now have maturing, 5-year old woodlots that they can begin to sustainably harvest for fuel, fruit, and medicine.

I attach a field report from Executive Director Nicholas Syano, which provides a more detailed look at our activities and accomplishments in the last three months. One of the highlights was our end of year party, in which hundreds of farmers and their families, as well as local teachers, government officials, and community members, ate, danced, and celebrated together, proud of the work they are doing together to restore their ecosystem and build their community.

Please feel free to contact me with any questions, ideas, or requests at any time now or in the future - 

Thank you again for your support and best wishes for the holidays and the year ahead,

Daniel Pike

Project Manager 
Drylands Natural Resources Center
danieljamespika@gmail.com

• DNRC Field Report - Q4 2013 (PDF)
  

Project overview: 33 cisterns providing 476 people with clean water

In September 2010, Wisconsin Rapids Sunrise Rotary donated the first 10,000 liter cistern, for Nicholas Syano and the DNRC to use in Mauni. Joanne Marshall, Sue Siewert, Gary Dreier and Kathy Schommer first introduced us to the Sunrise Rotary Club, and we continue to work together.

By the end of August 2013, 33 cisterns had been installed for 33 families in the community, directly benefiting 576 members of the Mauni community (79 women, 74 men, and 433 children.)

The following partners have come on board and are committed to expanding this program: Center for Community Regeneration (CCR), Wisconsin Rapids Sunrise Rotary Club, Wisconsin Rapids Noon Rotary Club, Greater Portage Rotary Club, Green Bay Rotary Club, the University of Wisconsin Stevens-Point Permaculture group (led by John Sheffy and Dr Holly), and the Denver Company Pharmacy Group.

Project goals: 1) Provide clean, plentiful water for every family; 2) Reduce deforestation and reinforce the DNRC reforestation program

This project aims to establish a rainwater harvesting system for every family in Maiuni, to provide residents with water for drinking, cooking, and garden use, and to reduce firewood consumption for boiling water. Gutters are installed around the roof of each house and a 10,000 litre cistern is put in place to catch rain water. (See picture below).

The whole community is involved in installing the cistern by bringing gravel, sand, and water and physically helping to build the cistern base and installation. Involving the whole community creates a sense of community and ownership.

To ensure transparency and fairness in how each new cistern is distributed, the names of DNRC program participants with well-cultivated woodlots are put in a hat, and a child draws a name at random. This encourages people to continue planting and properly cultivating trees.

Project impact: proven economic, environmental, health, and social benefits

Below is the river just after the rains. 200 families without cisterns rely on this single river for all of their drinking, cooking, and cleaning needs. They must walk long distances to bring water home; the water itself is not safe to drink. People must burn scarce firewood to make the water potable. When people don’t have firewood to boil water with, they drink the water directly. As a result, cases of typhoid and other water-borne illnesses are far too common.

Those with cisterns have fresh clean water just by their door step and don’t have to spend their valuable time walking long distance to fetch water. They also don’t have to resort to burning scarce reserves of firewood to boil unsafe water. For those with cisterns, no cases of water-borne illness have been recorded.

The cisterns renforce the DNRC's reforestation and agroforestry program in two ways: 1) reduce the time and labour burden on families', who can spend more time and effort on farming, working, studying, or other activities; 2) reducing the need to burn firewood, which undermines the sustainable forestry pratices our partner families are learning.

With each donated cistern the community installs together, the sense of community solidarity and trust grows. As more members in the community plant trees and grasses, seasonal rivers become permanent and springs will return, ensuring more water for the whole community. The community will have more trees to sustainably harvest for products such as timber, green charcoal, and food, increasing their income. Feedback loops are being diverted from negative to positive. A community is being regenerated, in ways that we think are replicable to communities around the world.