Forestry Training & Finance for 800 Farms in Kenya

Dear Friends, Family, and Supporters,

2013 has been a year of healthy growth and improvement for the DNRC.

We thank you for your continued support, and ask you to help us to continue growing in 2014. As the year comes to an end, please consider making a recurring donation yourself, and share our project with friends, family, and employers who might also like to support our work.

Our results for 2013:

• Increased the number of subsistence farmer-families we serve from 300 to 400.
• Increased the capacity of our tree sapling nursery, which now produces 42,000 new saplings per rainy season, over a wider range of tree and plant species.
• Installed 33 water cisterns - providing clean, potable water to 33 families - though our partnership with the Rotary Club.
• Established food forests (a woodland ecosystem with edible trees, shrubs, perennials and annuals) at five local primary and secondary schools (see attached picture).
• Hosted a five-day field course in permaculture, in partnership with Nyambani Village (http://www.nyumbani.org/).
• Hosted visitors and interns from GlobalGiving, the University of Wisconsin, and Wageningen University in the Netherlands.
• Expanded our staff, welcoming Fedelis as Outreach and Training Manager.

Our goals for 2014:

• Complete construction of our new office by March 1st.
• Expand nursery capacity to 50,000 saplings/season.
• Continue to build our partnerships with Nyumbani, the Rotary Club, and thre University of Wisconsin.
• Introduce effective income generation programs for our 400 farmers, many of whom now have maturing, 5-year old woodlots that they can begin to sustainably harvest for fuel, fruit, and medicine.

I attach a field report from Executive Director Nicholas Syano, which provides a more detailed look at our activities and accomplishments in the last three months. One of the highlights was our end of year party, in which hundreds of farmers and their families, as well as local teachers, government officials, and community members, ate, danced, and celebrated together, proud of the work they are doing together to restore their ecosystem and build their community.

Please feel free to contact me with any questions, ideas, or requests at any time now or in the future - 

Thank you again for your support and best wishes for the holidays and the year ahead,

Daniel Pike

Project Manager 
Drylands Natural Resources Center
danieljamespika@gmail.com

• DNRC Field Report - Q4 2013 (PDF)