Support education & conservation with ecobursaries

Scholarships

The year has been very encouraging; indeed, having successfully paid bursaries and engaged students and parents benefitting from the ASSETS Eco-bursary fund in exciting environmental awareness and livelihood activities. With a record of 38 students graduating from the programme expecting to proceed with their education in higher learning institutions come next year. During this period, we disbursed $18,348 to over 100 students across 50 secondary schools nationwide. This support has enabled students to remain in school, positively impacting their academic performance. Additionally, their parents have been actively involved in various conservation initiatives including rearing and planting over 20,000 trees in their shambas which not only contributed to the increase of tree cover but also contributed to the president's National tree planting campaign, which aims to plant 15 billion trees by 2032

The good news, this year the scholarship program has expanded to include 3 more schools. This increases the number of schools and the number of community members living around Arabuko Sokoke Forest benefitting from the ASSETS program and ultimately increasing the population involved in the conservation of the resource. As a result of this more environmental actions will be taken to conserve the Arabuko Sokoke forest. To make sure the program serves better, the team also has increased, with new 2 additional staff coming on board. An administrator who will be taking care of the administrative work of the programme and an Environmental Education officer whose role is to engage all schools and the beneficiaries of the programme to environmental-related themes and lessons to enthuse them to take action towards conserving natural resources

Holiday Camps

For the first time, this year beneficiary students were taken through a guided and educative tour of the Arabuko Sokoke forest. During our December holiday camps, we partnered with the Community Forest Association (CFA), Kenya Forest Service (KFS), and Kenya Wildlife Service(KWS) to take students inside the forest just to experience the beauty of nature as they learn about the importance of the forest and how they can support its conservation as the beneficiary of the forest

Conservation and Livelihoods

Our tree nursery project is still on course, with active participation from both parents and students in establishing and maintaining the nurseries. All the over 20,000 trees planted were reared from these nurseries. These trees will in the long run provide livelihood opportunities since some of them are first growing giving the community members alternative options to get income from. At the same time, they contribute to the overall tree cover benefits.

This year, in collaboration with I&M bank, launched a tree planting campaign which targets to plant 31,000 by the end of this year. This again contributes to our overall goal of conserving the environment by empowering the communities to take action to conserve and restore the Arabuko Sokoke forest.

We are grateful to all our donors and supporters for touching the lives of these very needy community members in a very special way. We receive wonderfully encouraging comments from our beneficiaries who always express gratitude to you all.