Dear friend,
You are receiving this update because you donated in the past. We want to thank you and let you know of our ongoing mission and successes.
We all want to do what we can to help the next generation. We want to help people raise food for their families and it now seems like climate change is happening so fast, that we are called to be helping this generation deal with what comes from climate swings.
We have been working on the reforestation of cover to support vital ecosystems, promote wildlife protection, and foster sustainable livelihoods and food production for local communities by protecting and enriching their watersheds.
Your funds have provided trees to plant and tools for farmers to help meet the needs of families struggling with poverty and malnutrition. With Joshua Machinga, the Kenyan partner, we work in cooperation with the Ministries of Health and Agriculture.
The project has been vital to many struggling families during these difficult times. With climate change, Kenya experiences more intense storms and flooding where low-lying floods and torrential rains can destroy crops.
A project that all families can partake in combines intensive home-based agricultural training on "sack" gardening, participatory peer-to-peer health, and vegetable growing solutions for the poorest family. Sacks are filled with earth and then planted with vegetable seeds, offering an important solution to many of the challenges of those without land.
Sack gardening is low-cost and doesn’t require chemical fertilizers or pesticides or even land. Organic waste from the kitchen is converted into compost and used in sack gardening, while greywater from washing is used to irrigate the sacks.
To date, over 900 families are practicing organic sack gardening in Kiminini, Kenya thanks to donations. 8 to 10 sacks provide a household with a regular supply of vegetables and generated an average weekly income of $21.
We thank you for being a part of a true grassroots approach to helping families have sustainable food sources and ask that you think of us when you are reminded of the crisis that we all face.
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Dear Supporter,
With climate disasters escalating around the world, Kenya, as a bread basket country is threatened with a draught that leads to famine. There is a lot we can do and it's happening with your help.
We are excited to announce that our primary goal to plant 250,000 native and endemic trees across Trans Nzoia County by 2025 is underway!
In order to achieve this goal, a team of local forestry, agroforestry, and climate experts are guiding the project as volunteers and pledge to continue to do so for the next 3 years through Joshua Machinga and Common Ground for Africa. Under their guidance, nurseries are being developed in all the 5 sub-counties across the county with funds from a small grant. Saplings of carefully selected trees and plant species are raised in these nurseries during the non-planting season between May thru Oct.
Mass plantation of saplings is taking place right now. This will go on throughout the short rains between Oct and early December by the farmers, volunteers, NGOs, school children, and the general public. Planted saplings will be effectively monitored and nurtured by providing optimum conditions for growth to ensure a high survival rate.
We have already conducted a successful mass planting drive in the month of September that covered 5 sub-counties, planting 15,000 trees.
We are looking forward to your support for more plantings. We are taking a stand on doing something that tackles climate change and we ask for your support. Anything helps and best of all, small monthly donations provide momentum and provide the farmers with hope for the project's future.
Thank you!
Shana
What is our goal? Well, simply put, we are doing what we can do to reduce the severity of global climate change by planting trees to remove excess carbon from our atmosphere.
Science journals say that we need 25% more forested area than we have now but realistically we need to plant more than a half-trillion trees. If we did, we would capture 205 gigatons of carbon. That’s enough to negate about 20 years of human-produced carbon emissions at the current rate or about half of all carbon emitted by humans since 1960. Planting trees will never be a substitute for decreasing fossil fuel emissions but it will provide food and shade for our parched earth.
Joshua Machinga of Common Ground for Africa and I are teaming up for our love of the natural world and a legacy for children and their children. We know that a half-trillion trees will take a lot of us and a lot of organizations. For us, we focus on trees that are food-producing doing double duty.
This first phase of the project set up demonstration plots in five sub-counties in Trans Nzoia County to demonstrate the production of food crops using GROW BIOINTENSIVE farming methods that use a fraction of resources to grow more food. This training was combined with business training leading to increased income and employment creation for rural communities.
We hope you join us in helping these farmers plant trees. Whatever you donate for the month of July will be matched to plant trees.
Thank you!
Dear supporter,
Yes, the world is upside down. It's painful to think of the suffering around the world. It's hard to know how to move forward in a positive way but we supporting farmers yields positive results.
Dear supporter,
Whether it’s articles popping up on your newsfeed or a discussion with friends and coworkers, there is seemingly endless information available to you about climate change. With so much information swirling about and climate catastrophies affecting us all over the world, its hard to get a handle on what we can do as individual citizens of the earth.
With our 19-year history of promoting sustainability planting trees and adhering to our core values, we are going to continue to to plant moringa trees but also add the focus of Agroecology and Restorative Farming - Simply put, we are committed to the support and training of smallholder farmers to apply ecological principles to their agricultural systems and to restore degraded soil.
In Kenya and in farming communities all over the world. people are having to contend with the profound and accelerating impact of climate change, from drought to flooding, from locusts to crop pests. Since industrial farming is responsible for nearly 30-50% of global greenhouse gas emissions, sustainable food systems are essential to our survival on earth.
We are working with long time partner, Joshua Machinga and Common Ground for Africa (CGA) who promotes smallholder farming, conservation, market based, local economics and entrepreneurship in Kenya. Almost half of Kenya’s extreme poor live in rural villages and lack means and skills to boost their agricultural efforts for their livelihood. Agricultural yields and profits are only a fraction of their potential since the region is full of opportunities for growth, including labor, land and thousands of smallholder farmers who are eager for change.
In breaking down the particulars, it will only costs $45 per household for a beehive that provides a food source and essential pollination of their crops, $20 buys garden tools for a family (machete, spade and hoe), $40 buys 400 tree seedlings and $5 per person in a family to be trained and mentored.
We are still supporting the womens' groups who grow moringa but are compelled to create a holistic program that also works in soil regeneration and drought farming. CGA our partner has been working in five Sub Counties of Trans-Nzoia County. It covers an area of 2,496 Km2. The five Sub-Counties are Endebess, Cherangany, Saboti, Kwanza and Kiminini. The sub counties are further sub divided into 39 locations, 63 sub locations and 1,610 Villages.
Thank you for your support in the past. We do hope that you will join us in assisting farmers in their efforts after COVID has had a devastating impact on the well being of this area.
Thank you!
Shana Greene
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