Climate Action Awareness Through a Shelter-Kenya

The donations from GlobalGiving have been of great assistance to our shelter. Our established food forest has been doing well, which was planted during our workshop and the participants planted a lot of vegetables, fruit trees, eco trees during their practical lessons. For the last three months, we have been able to have enough vegetables for our residents and children and we have also been able to make sales; we have been selling surplus to nearby market and business women. From the feedback that we get from our customers, our vegetables are very competitive in the market; they are healthy and tastier. We have been using bio fertilizers, compost manure and animal manure from our chicken, cows and rabbits. Despite the great achievements from our food forest, lack of rains has been an issue since the food forest do not have enough water making the farm less productive as it was during the rainy season. We have been watering the food forest at least twice per week and this has helped sustain the vegetables and trees. We have a culture of eating what we produce at our shelter and since the establishment of this food forest, we have been eating a variety of vegetables; tomatoes, herbs such as rosemary, parsley, spinach, kales, amaranth, African nightshade, Chinese cabbage, potatoes etc. We wish to thank all those who contributed towards this noble project that has been of great benefit to our shelter as we continue to empower the survivors of sexual and domestic violence. Your support helps us to continue stewarding their souls as we steward the land.

We have managed to establish a synotropic forest in one part of our farm. During the establishment of this part, we incorporated training where a total of 20 residents and staff from our shelter were trained on synotropic farming which is a kind of farming that seeks to cultivate resilient ecosystems by regenerating the soil without the need of long term external inputs. Through the biodiversity of the plants, the soil becomes rich and sequesters Carbon. This is part of creating awareness to combat and reverse climate change by building healthy, biologically-diverse and mineral-rich soils, all the while sequestering carbon from the atmosphere. Presently, we are planning for a Permaculture and Food Forest Workshop which is open to members of the community as from 18th April to 21st April. The workshop will also incorporate practicals on another different part of our farm where we will establish now a permaculture food forest. The workshop aims at creating awareness on available small local climate solutions thus a ripple effect and inviting more people to contributing towards mitigation. The forests will provide food/fruits for the shelter residents and create a holistic, living-in-harmony-with-nature experience. Will also help in water conservation and reduction of the effects of the greenhouse gases and assist in carbon sequestration thus contributing to mitigation of climate change. We have are currently working on the land in preparation (earthworks) for the upcoming workshop. Our team of facilitators is as well mobilizing for participants so as to reach out to a big number of people as possible.