This blog was written by Rachel Beale, our Fundraising & Communications Assistant.
Regional Manager and community members from the Books for Trees programme in Nakuru, Kenya.
Sustainability and resilience are two of Five Talents’ guiding principles. In everything we do, we ask “is it going to have a long term impact?” and “can it withstand and adapt to change?”. As climate change intensifies, these questions become increasingly harder to answer. Our partners and members live in countries which are disproportionately affected by climate change. Flooding, landslides and drought have devastated communities across eastern Africa, and our partner programmes are no exception.
Savings Groups encourage members to build climate-resilient businesses. For example, planting crops which require minimum water, or using savings to invest in rainwater harvest tanks and solar panels for electricity. In the past, we’ve also partnered with other NGOs who are specialists in agri-training. However, we know that the burden of building resilience against and mitigating the impacts of climate change is not just on our partners and members, but also on us.
The UK team has always tried to find ways to minimise our impact on the environment, but the nature of our work means each year we do have to make periodic trips to programmes to assist our partners and to visit members themselves. We take a number of steps to minimise the amount of flights we take. However, we felt it was right to take further action to offset the impacts of the flights we do take.
We are therefore delighted to announce we have partnered with Gone West, a global for-purpose tree planting company! Their goal is to create environmental and social benefits around the world through involving local communities; thereby generating ethical, green jobs and helping to establish and restore natural habitats. This year, we chose to contribute to their ‘Books for Trees’ project, as it restores much of the environment in rural Kenya, where several of our partner programmes are based. Just 2.7% of the highlands in Kenya is wooded, after extensive deforestation over hundreds of years. Books for Kenya ultimately aims to make trees attractive as a source of income, and to anchor trees (as components of rituals) in the tradition of the population of the parish of Ololkirikirai, not too far from our post-funding partner programme in Nakuru. So far, Gone West has planted over 200 trees in this project, and over 9 million trees globally over the last 10 years.!
We know this isn’t all we can be doing to combat climate change, but we are making changes in the right direction, and grateful for our friends at Gone West for working with us.