Plant 50,000 Native Trees for Refugees in Uganda

Thank you for continuing to follow our journey of planting trees in the Palorinya Refugee Settlement! We would like to give you an update of our work here over the past 5 years, which could not have been completed without your support all this time. 

As you know, WildFF started working in the Moyo/Obongi districts of Northern Uganda in 2018. This area was chosen in response to the 2016 South Sudanese refugee migration with the intention of addressing rapid loss of tree cover, desertification, climate change and soil depletion in both refugee settlement sites and neighboring host communities. 

For the past 5 years, we have worked with our partners on the ground to protect and restore the area’s valuable forest resources. With generous support from One Tree Planted (OTP) and the Conservation, Food, and Health Foundation (CFH), we have:

• Planted over 360,000 trees

• Built over 4,000 fuel-efficient cookstoves with refugee families

• Trained about 500 locals in various areas, including: agroforestry, cookstove construction, sensitization workshops on reforestation efforts and climate resilience, sustainable charcoal production, and technical operation of kilns (for charcoal production)

• Created over 100 jobs to support operations,16 of which were in a full or part time capacity

And in honor of Women's History Month, we'd like to mention how our initiatives focused on empowering the women of the community!

• 64 women were the direct beneficiaries of the agroforestry component

• 30 of the 60 traditional charcoal producer (TCP) participants in sustainable charcoal production

• 1,048 women received fuel-efficient stoves

• 25 women partook in the agro-waste briquette groups

• 4 of the 8 nursery attendants are women

• 60 women volunteered for pot filling and maintenance at the nursery site

For the future, we are continuing to pursue funding opportunities to protect and restore buffer zone areas adjacent to high-value ecological areas (forest preserves and the Nile River) in an effort to grow native trees to maturity and build habitat for the wildlife. 

Finally, we wanted to let you know that we will no longer have a GlobalGiving profile by the end of the month. We are trying to consolidate some of our platforms. If you would like to continue following our progress in Palorinya, please sign up for our newsletter at wildff.org! 

With gratitude,

The WildFF team