Kakamega Rainforest Restoration Project

Dear Donors:

Over the last few months, we have been making steady progress on all of the components of the Kakamega Rainforest Restoration Project: restoration within the forest, income-generating activities on farms surrounding the forest, spiritual animation of small farmers surrounding the forest, and catchment rehabilitation. We have:

1. Developed a final draft of our agreement with the Kenya Forest Service that will govern the core of the project, which is restoration of five sites in the forest over the project's five-year life. Fellow board member, Alfred Mulamba and I met with the KFS Kakamega Ecosystem Conservator, Maurice Wanyiri, in November. KFS Forester Osinde followed up our discussion with a visit to our nurseries in December, where he provided technical advice to the farmers.

2. Discussed our obligations under the Nagoya Protocol of the Convention on Biological Diversity with Luke Otipo, Chair of the Kakamega County Technical Advisory Committee on Access and Benefit Sharing. Our partnership with the County is key to the successful involvement of small farmers in the IGA component of the project.

3. Laid the foundation for spiritual (Laudato Si) outreach to farmers in the vicinity of our first tree planting site in Iloro Forest. I met Fr. Augustine Lubanga, Parish Priest of the St. Joseph the Worker Shibuye Parish, who will most likely host the launch ceremony at his new outstation church, St. Mary's, which is under construction in Iloro. I followed up by touching bases with Very Reverent Fr. Vincent Mukokho, Vikar General of Kakamega, just to keep him posted on our progress. The Kakamega Diocese will be key to coordinating the recruitment of an inter-faith cadre of clergy to keep our farmer's souls, as well as their bank accounts, satisfied through participation in our project. They already support an extemely active tree-planting program in their Diocese.

I also had the opportunity to chat (face mask to face mask, not online!) with the newly installed Archbishop of the Catholic Archdiocese of Nairobi, Philip Anyolo, who hails from the project area. I shared some information about the project and he responded enthusastically. I hope he will be able to spread the good word with Nairobi faithful!

4. Visited the Iloro Primary School, which is near St. Mary's Church, to select a likely staging area for tools, seedlings and workers in preparation for the first planting of the seedlings next year. The school grounds contain a large, open area directly overlooking the forest.

5. Delivered a request for the donation of 5,000 fruit tree seedings to Joseph Irungu, the Permanent Secretary, Kenya Ministry of Water, Sanitation and Irrigation, through KWENCH board member, George Muruli, who is the Personal Assistant to Cabinet Secretary for the Kenya Ministry of Interior and Coordination of National Government. It is our hope to be able to give the seedlings, along with sweet potato vines, which we hope will be donated by GIZ (the German development agency) to local farmers in the project area during the launch.

The combination of fruit tree seedlings and sweet potato vines has the potential to arrest erosion in degraded catchment areas that drain into the Kakamega Rainforest while producing extra income for the farmers (see link to the agrilinks article, below). The fruit trees are likely to be avocados, a very important export earner for Kenya (see the link to the Kenya Star article, below). Sweet potatoes, like our other proposed IGA products (honey and other bee-related commodities, mushrooms and native hardwoods) have multiple value chains and can threfore penetrate markets at many levels.

6. Speaking of catchment rehabilitation, the Chairman of our partner organization, Isiukhu Water Resource Users Association (WRUA), Paul Agoi, attended a workshop on catchment rehabilitation in the Kambiri area in early December. Kambiri, which drains into the Kakamega Forest National Reserve, is suffering from a high rate of soil erosion and is the first target of our project's catchment rehabilitation component. The workshop was co-hosted by GIZ and ICRAF, the World Agroforestry Center.

7. Finally, but most important, our seedlings are thriving and will be big enough to transplant into the forest at the beginning of the long rains in March 2022.

Thank you so much for your support and have a very happy holiday season!

Links:

• Fruit Trees, Sweet Potatoes & Tropical Rainforests, Philippines
• Kenya Avocado Exports

Dear Donors and Other Supporters:

KWENCH has been hard at work getting the Kakamega Rainforest Restoration Project rolling. Since our application to GlobalGiving was approved in April of this year, we have made some administrative changes and have accomplished our first seed planting to produce the maiden crop of seedlings for our restoration work.

Administrative Adjustments

We amended KWENCH’s constitution so that it is broad enough to govern the forest restoration and ecosystem compatible, income-generating activities on small farms envisioned in the project. We also added several new board members to help us with the project’s development and implementation, including an agroecologist from Greenpeace; an associate program officer from the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa; a county employee who is also the Director General of a coalition of 88 community-based organizations in Kakamega County; a very senior-level, Kenyan government official to help us navigate the maze of government requirements and a former seminarian to guide the spiritual component of the project. To see their photos, please visit our Facebook page.

Seed Planting Near Iloro Forest, 28 August 2021

In anticipation of the project’s official launch and initial planting of seedlings in the forest, which we hope to accomplish in November, we have planted seeds of native trees on small farms near our intended launch site in Iloro Forest, which is part of the Kakamega Rainforest complex. The farmers, who have experience in agroforestry, will tend the germinating seeds until the young plants are big enough to transplant and will sell them back to the project team at a steep discount.

We have planted the seeds of two tree species native to the Kakamega Rainforest:

Croton macrostachyus Broad-leaf Croton. It is commonly planted as a shade tree in villages and coffee plantations in Kenya. The leaves and bark have many medicinal uses, including as an anti-malaria drug, and as a purgative and to treat stomach aches, and the wood is used for construction, flooring, and making tools and boxes.

Maeopsis eminii Umbrella Tree. It is frequently grown as a shade tree for crops and for regeneration of degraded forests, since it grows quickly. The wood is used for construction and firewood and the leaves are used as animal fodder.

Within the next week, we hope to acquire the seeds of additional native tree species and plant them on more farms.

Our work so far has been supported purely by the volunteer efforts of our board members, who are contributing their time, effort and cash to get the project going. To date, we have been banking your generous contributions because the project launch and initial planting will be expensive.

Please stay tuned: the hard work lies ahead and we need you on our team!

Links:

• Facebook Page