Our planet is currently grappling with the problem of climate change. This problem has increased hunger and poverty in Africa and other less developed countries that depend on rain-fed agriculture. However, it is possible to reverse this situation by using a very natural solution: planting trees.
Trees have the power to sequester carbon, improve soil quality, increase biodiversity, provide a source of food and much more.
The Daughters of Destiny Childrens Trust (Kenya) and Stichting Likoni Onderneemt (The Netherlands) have created a social enterprise called Gardening Galore, whose purpose is to exploit the commercial opportunities that exist in providing solutions to the problem of climate change.
Covid 19 Baby
It dawned on us that the biggest impact we had on the community that we serve were the jobs that we provided for the 17 members of staff that we had on our payroll at the time, and the many others who directly did business with the school. Jobs that were at threat because of the freeze on education services and all other economic activities that had been frozen.
Dump Site Turned into Tree Nusery
After a thorough self-evaluation of our institution, we realized that we had some resources at our disposal which we could use to create some value not only for ourselves but for our community and the world at large. We realized that we had: land, water, labour, and a dump site right outside our fence which we could use to start a tree nursery.
The aim of starting the tree nursery was two-fold:
- To tackle the de-forestation situation that Kenya was facing and the climate change problem that was and still is a global challenge.
- To create decent jobs for young people at a time when the economy was depressed.
Immense Opportunities
So the underlying theory behind Gardening Galore is that the climate change problem comes with immense job opportunities to those who can provide solutions to it.
The solutions that we could offer immediately were:
- To grow trees & flowers.
- To collect compost from the illegal dump sites and use it as planting medium for the trees.
- To collect plastic packaging materials from the dump sites and use them to host the trees that we plant as a way of reducing the amount of plastic in the landfills.
15 billion trees
3-year partnership with Wilde Ganzen
Having worked with Wilde Ganzen on the school project a number of times before, we approached them and sold them on the tree nursery idea, which we worked on with our contact at Wilde Ganzen for about two years (2021-2023) until we were able to crystallise it into a programme that would be both financially and environmentally sustainable.
We started the programme with Wilde Ganzen called “Partnering with women and youth to restore Kenya’s forest cover”. The programme is a three-year partnership that aims to:
- Scaling up production in the first year by acquiring the necessary infrastructure, equipment and manpower to produce tree seedlings on a large scale. And establish an urban demonstration farm.
- Open 3 retail outlets for the tree seedlings in the second year. And work with rural farmers to plant fruit trees on their farms.
- Add value to agricultural products in year three.
Scaling up
We are currently on track to achieve most of our goals for the first year. What we have not been able to achieve is the result of wrong assumptions in the project design.
We have now scaled up our production by employing 10 young men and women as trainees and have experimented with selling our products to the public through two outlets.
General Public not yet ready
Our production capacity is however far greater than our sales capacity. Our nursery and retail outlets have in excess of 300,000 trees of different species. We have realized that though Kenya is in great need of trees (15 billion trees by 2030), the general public has not yet owned the tree planting agenda, they don’t see it as their responsibility.
Different Strategy
We therefore need to employ a different sales strategy and shift from a local to global mindset and start targeting government institutions, big corporations and non-governmental organizations who understand the climate change problem and are interested in offering a solution.
Mango tree planting campaign
We are currently in the process of launching a mango tree planting campaign starting from Kenya’s national tree planting day 13th November 2024. The campaign’s objective is to distribute Ten thousand grafted mango seedlings to rural farmers around the coastal region of Kenya as a wealth creation strategy for the poor rural farmers.
We are asking organizations to buy mango seedlings from our nursery at three euros each and we distribute them to the rural farmers of coastal Kenya.
The campaign has gained the support of 5 Kenyan organizations and more are set to join the campaign before the set launch date.
International approach
As global citizens, we are also appealing to international organizations and individuals to also buy the seedlings on behalf of the poor rural Kenyan farmers not only as a wealth creation strategy for rural communities but also as a way of reducing carbon from the atmosphere, which benefits everyone on the globe.
Our current business model is one where we do both production and sales in the short run. However, in the long run we want to concentrate on the sales function and leave the production to our current team of trainees who will rent the production space from us and supply our retail outlets with the trees, flowers, pots and any other products that they can produce.
Value addition to fruit products produced around the coastal region of Kenya is still in our sights and we intend to venture into it at a small scale in year 2 of our partnership and test the waters before we scale up in year three of our partnership.
Lessons learned
The journey so far has been full of lessons that could never be learned in theory. We now have a clearer view of the business landscape and a better understanding of what our business needs to take it to the next level.
We are grateful for our partnership with Wilde Ganzen, as it has positioned us as a major contributor to solutions to the problem of climate change.
We are determined to make Gardening Galore a success story, and seeing the lives of the young people who have been transformed by the jobs they get here fuels our drive to get up every day and push towards our goals.