The project entitled "Suswa Sustainable Integrated Fruit Growing and School Agroforestry Project" will be implemented in Suswa Girls High School, Narok County, Kenya The project being proposed aims to address Students' livelihood needs for income generation, fuel wood, timber, fruit, fodder and other non-timber forest products while halting and reversing the trend of the forest loss and related environmental degradation in Narok county through promoting vegetable and fruit tree growing.
Over the last few years, the forest cover in Suswa area has significantly reduced. Accordingly, the local people reported that many parts of the area had extensive forest and tree cover but now most of it is gone. This has resulted in loss of biodiversity (including medicinal plants and wild animals in the former hunting areas) and severe land degradation due to soil erosion and loss of fertility.
The project targets to plant at least 60,000 trees (including fruit trees as well as multi-purpose trees for firewood, poles and shade purposes) and vegetables over 18 months. The types of fruit trees and vegetables to be grown will be determined by the participating pupils and teachers depending on their preferences including: avocado, mango, oranges, guava, jackfruit, papaya and passion fruit; cabbages, pineapple and egg plants, tomatoes, onions among others.
The goal of the project is to contribute to the eradication of poverty, food insecurity and fostering a lasting high quality of life for the school pupils of Suswa Girls High school in Suswa area while safeguarding long-term environmental sustainability by growing fruits (including fruit and multi-purpose trees) and promoting Agroforestry systems. Its mission is: "planting fruit trees for healthier populations and better environment". More than 10.000 people are expected to benefit indirectly
This project has provided additional documentation in a Microsoft Word file (projdoc.doc).
