KENY VILLAGE TREE BIRTH INITIATIVE PROJECT

The climate crisis is a key issue that is shaping the future of children and young people everywhere. It’s more important than ever that children are learning, reflecting, and acting together to create a sustainable future for everyone.

In that regards, Competence building Society of Early Childhood Education for Kenya (CBSECEK) has launched the Kenya Village Tree Birth Initiative Project. The project has identified a number of villages across the Republic of Kenya for supporting young people initiative to create small village forest as an initiative to restore our forest across the country as well as food security initiative since we will encourage the plantation of fruit Trees such as Mangoes, Oranges, Avocados and most common fruits by each community based on the climate as well as the soil productivity of the area.

Our Project will be a collaborative project between several numbers of local artists, young environmentalist and local communities that supports the planting of trees in small-scale forests across the 47 Counties in the Republic of Kenya. Alongside the plantation of trees, the project has included participatory events, workshops and arts exhibitions with an emphasis on community involvement. The project aims to better connect people with their food and consider social, environmental and economic sustainability together. Community involvement and empowerment play an integral role in the project.

The project’s first attempts have been within our local primary and secondary schools working in collaboration with pupils and staff to design and plant the small school forest. This model of community consultation and co-design has been implemented throughout the span of the project initiative with the aims of instilling a sense of ownership and empowerment amongst those involved in each school and maintained by its own group of volunteers.

The project will utilised existing networks of local food growing in the communities, such as community gardens and allotment plots, to select some of the sites for fruits. The remit is to promote and support community food growing in most deprived areas, including establishing new growing sites incorporating fruits.

The project will also include the community events and workshops. To ensure the long-term stewardship of the initiatives while also increasing skills and resource sharing in the area, the project’s workshops will address topics of design, planting, pruning and harvesting.

The implications of climate change on the food system hold serious consequences for future food security, while current methods of food production and distribution contribute greatly to carbon emissions. Our project will explore the dilemma of food security and climate resilience utilising our communities as a microcosm of global issues.

SUSTAINABILITY ISSUES

The project seeks to address the following sustainability issues:

Growing food locally reduces the carbon emissions associated with food production and distribution.
Local food production brings economic and social value to neglected or overlooked spaces in some of the communities’ most deprived areas.
Planting trees increases carbon sequestration and the creation of green space in our areas reduces the heat effect.
Planting areas with a variety of tree species increases biodiversity and encourages pollinators.
Skill learning and resource sharing has a positive impact on the socio-economic sustainability of the communities’ by enabling local residents to participate in community-building projects and local economic activity.