A Tree Planting Project: Environmentally Sustaining Smallholder Farming

Many of the Kenyan farmers that work through with Rural Development Connections (RDC) have cut down the trees over the years to make charcoal. For a farming family in Rural Kenya, charcoal is used as the predominant fuel for cooking and heating one’s home. In the past trees are not seen as a thing of natural beauty, yet as a means of survival. However, by cutting down so many trees biodiversity, soil strength and crop health on the farms have been compromised. The trees used to provide a shade canopy over the coffee trees, ensuring that they did not burn form the harsh rays of the equatorial sun. In addition by cutting down indigenous old growth trees, the farmers inadvertently have contributed to global warming by destroying some of the natural forests that offset human carbon dioxide pollution.

RDC is launching a Tree Planting Project as part of its sustainable farming program to counteract the environmental damage done. RDC’s aims to plant 500 indigenous and tropical trees in a farming community outside of Nyeri Town, Central Province, Kenya. The trees planted -- such as the indigenous Wild Fig that has deep roots able to pierce bedrock, bringing water to surface -- are expected to assist in encouraging the reintroduction of biodiversity on the farms, strengthen the soil and prevent mineral loss and erosion and provide the much needed shade of coffee trees.

RDC will develop a tress sapling nursery where young trees can be raised by the farming community until old enough to be planted into the farms. Each farmer will be responsible for the trees on his/her own farm and be expected to care for it through the years to come. As significant way of enticing the farmers to care for their trees and not cut them down in the future, RDC will teach the farmers the benefits of environmental farming in the Farmer Education Resource Center and look to trade carbon credits of the trees through the international markets as an alternative income.

During recent years the international community has become more concerned with global warming and the affects tress can have in offsetting Carbon Dioxide emissions from pollution. According to the most recent Economist, Carbon Credits are trading for approximately 30USD a ton. RDC farmer beneficiaries have a median of 100 coffee trees per farm, which may sequester roughly .5 tons of CO2 a year[1]. While coffee trees are often pruned to around six feet for ease of harvest and have a narrow trunk diameter (defining the CO2 sequestration rate) other taller trees with wider trunks such as many indigenous trees sequester heavier amounts of CO2. By planting indigenous trees, RDC hopes to increase each farmed acre CO2 sequestration rate to minimum of 2 tons a year and in the future trade these carbon credits on the international market on behalf of the farmers.

To donate funds to support Rural Development Connection’s Tree Planting Project see or for more information please contact Shannon Mulholland at info@ruraldevelopmentconnections.org

[1] The CO2 sequester calculation completed using an algorithm developed by research by Trees for the Future: http://www.treesftf.org/

5th Annual Novato Rotaract Halloween Bash: 31 October

For any of you in the San Francisco Bay Area that do not yet have plans for Halloween, but want to have some fun...why not come to the 5th Annual Novato Rotaract Halloween Bash?

Come dance and drink all night long with the rest us and you can know that funds raised by the party go towards our Kenyan programs! Dress in your best costume to The Novato Horsemen's Club.

Doors open at 7PM

Tickets $35

For more information: http://rotaracthalloween.org/

From the Ground Up: Composting with Coffee

Applying used coffee grounds to your garden as a soil ammendment or compost pile can be a great a source of nutrition to help your flowers grow.

Used coffee grounds are a perfect addition to compost or flowerbeds because:
1. They hold moisture.
2. They are free and unlike many over the counter products, they smell good and are not toxic if inhaled (as some inorganic fertilzers).
3. They contain Nitrogen-Phosphate-Potassium (N-P-K) and other trace elements.
4. They can deter slugs
5. They add acidity to the soil.

How to apply used coffee grounds in your garden: You can place the coffee ground directly on the top of your soil. Plants that like a lot of acid such as hydrangeas and azaleas will love you. Keeping in mind that you don’t want to add too much acid, you should balance the coffee grounds with the paper coffee filter (!!), dried leaves, chipped bark or shreaded cardboard (bowns) to ensure you keep the soil pH balanced.

How to utlize used coffee grounds in your composter:Since Coffee is high in nitrogen they act as a green material (rather than brown) when decomposing in your composter. Make sure to layer the coffee grounds (and other green materials) with browns (such as the used coffee filter (!!), dried leaves, dried grasses, chipped bark, or shreaded cardboard/paper). This layering affect will help speed up the decompotion process and if you have a vermicomposter (worm composting) ensure that you do no encourage fruit flies or other pests while providing the wiggly wigglers with “bedding”.

Coffee grounds will hold the mositiure to encourge decompostion and when correctly combined with enough browns they will generate heat. Keep in mind that there is too much of a good thing (even coffee) so don’t pile too much coffee into your composter and balance the grounds with other kicthen scraps (fruit peels, egg shells, vegetable cuttings, etc…) To ensure to not imbalance your composters pH too much you may want to through in a little lime, wood ash or baking soda. 1-2 spoons for every few lbs of coffee should e sufficent. This will also help if you have a vermicomposter to ensure the worms don’t get burnt from too much acid.

For more information on composting please see: www.vermicomposters.com or talk to your local organic gardening shop.

Organic Farming Training Commences

Last week the farmers started their first course in a forty hour intensive organic farming training course. The farmers are by default farming organic, but they do not understand the intrinsic value of such practices...yet! To date many have used cow manure to fertilizer their crops but not believing it was as good as the blue stuff that comes in a bag. They understand that they need to control the pests but questioned if there was another way to a chemical that makes their skin peal off (no, I'm not kidding!) when they administer it through a pump spray can on their backs.

With the farmers' interest in learning new (and cheap!!) ways of farming, our on the ground partnership with Green Dreams Ltd and through the financial sponsorship of MamaHope, Rural Development Connections is facilitating organic trainings to teach the farmers valuable knowledge. Modules include What does organic mean?, Why is organic produce worth more money?, How do I farm organically?, How do I compost and what are the benefits?, and How to cultivate earthworms and why.

This is the beginning of having the farms certified organic by the East African Organic Association, which will in turn not only provide lasting environmental affects on the land, but allow the farmers to sell the produce at 25-100% premiums in comparison to "regular" produce.

We are on the road to self-sustainability!

To see more photos please log onto our facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/pages/Coffee-Connections/56441116902

Nau.com Funding Contest to win $10,000

Shannon Mulholland, the Executive Director of the Coffee Connection Project is currently being considered to win $10,000 towards the Coffee Connections Project. To win she needs over 100 votes by the 31 August. Won't you please help? It will only take two minutes and you will help change the lives of Kenyan farmers!!!

Take a look at this: http://secure.smilebox.com/ecom/openTheBox?sendevent=4d5441324e4459344e7a673d0d0a&blogview=true&campaign=blog_playback_link

and vote here: http://www.nau.com/collective/grant-for-change/shannon-mulholland-693.html

The Collective | Stories About Movement | Nau.com

The Collective | Stories About Movement | Nau.com

Posted using ShareThis

Summer Intern, Krisandra Adams' accounts of her summer in Kenya

When looking for a Summer internship, the last place one might expect to end up is in Africa. Well that was the last place I expected to be anyway, but as the month of May drew to a close, I found myself within the heart of Kenya in a lovely city called Nairobi, interning for an NGO called Rural Development Connections (RDC). RDC works to help farmers find ways to improve the quality and quantity of their crops, to be able to profit more from agri-business, and promotes the completion of children's education in rural communities. Through RDC the farmers will be able to learn how to profit more from their crops on their own and not have to be dependent on RDC forever, and by pushing for the education of their children, the future generations will have the opportunity to pursue other livelihoods, if they wish, or be able to improve upon systems that their parents have developed for the farms.
The first thing that struck me when I arrived in Nairobi was how fast-paced and Westernized it appeared to be. The traffic was insane! The streets were packed full of speeding automobiles that did not seem to be following any traffic laws; at least not any traffic laws that I was accustomed to. There were many traffic lights, but no one paid any attention to those. They appeared to be more of a decoration than a safety precaution. On top of the crazy traffic, there were the Matatus. Matatus are a privatized bus system, but, in my personal opinion, anyone who chooses to ride in one of those death traps must have a few screws loose. I'd have to say the similarity of Kenyan culture to the Western culture I am accustomed to provided more of a culture shock than the African parts of the culture. I had come expecting to see people in more traditional African attire and living off the land. The last thing I had expected was to go to Nairobi and have it feel somewhat like home. Probably the scariest aspect of Kenya for me was the traffic and the Matatus. Once I had experienced that, the travel clinic's warnings about diseases and dangerous animals did not seem anywhere near as alarming as they first had. I would take facing down a lion over riding in a Matatu any day.
In Kenya, it seemed that everywhere I looked, I saw Western products being advertised. One can find Barack Obama merchandise anywhere. I even saw a man sporting a baseball cap that had the Cleveland Indian's baseball logo on it. Contrasted against this, the poverty of the country stood out in an almost glaring fashion. In Nyeri Town, the farmers live without running water or electricity. They reside in ramshackle huts that don't appear to provide much shelter. Within the city of Nairobi, there appears to be a higher standard of living, but it is obvious that people are still struggling to get by. Mothers send their children out into traffic just to beg for money. People will endanger themselves by standing in the middle of the road just to try and sell anything from a toy windmill to a kitten. I found it painful to see how hard the people work to only reap minimal benefits.
Working with RDC in Kenya gave me the chance to interact directly with the farmers who are a part of the program. My first impression of the farmers was that they are extraordinarily hard-working, very family oriented, and just friendly, happy people in general. One of the farmers, David Gachigi, stands out in my mind because he reminded me of a large, happy teddy bear. He is the type of person that you just cannot help but want to give a hug to. Even though the farmers live in such dismal condition, they never seemed unhappy. Their community is very close knit. Multiple generations of the families live and work together, and even those that are not blood-related seem to be treated like family as well. When one young man died, the entire town grieved at his passing.
While with the farmers, my job was to gather information about them for the database. That should have been an easy enough task, except for the fact that many of the farmers had not had the chance to receive a formal education and, thus, did not speak English very well or, in some cases, at all. So I was able to converse with some of the farmers, and they showed me their crops and discussed their methods of farming, but there were many times that I required a translator. Thankfully, an amazing person named Peter, who seems to be a master of languages, is a part of the Kenyan team of RDC. The amount of laughter while Peter was speaking Kikuyu, the local tribal language, with them made me feel like I was missing out on something. Therefore, that experience has made me wish to study their language so that I can eventually go back and converse with them directly.
During my stay in Kenya, I did do the tourist thing. I went out on safaris in national parks, Seeing giraffes, zebras, and warthogs close up, and getting stuck in the midst of a herd of buffalo was pretty nifty. I even got to pet a baby rhinoceros that reminded me of a hard, slimy puppy. But, in the end, I believe that my most important experience was with the farmers. It taught me something about life. Even with the barriers caused by cultural differences and languages, we can still connect as human beings with a hearty laugh and a big smile that can never be misinterpreted.