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Over the past 18 months, our Permaculture Teaching Centre in Garashi has made a significant positive impact on tree planting communities across rural Kenya. Its very existence has proved to be an absolute blessing, strengthening our ability to reforest the country and mitigate our global climate crisis.
However, having a great educational establishment is one thing; having access to reliable data and communications is quite another. Digital communications, particularly across rural Kenya, are deteriorating due to several factors, including frequent power outages, ageing infrastructure, bandwidth limitations and connectivity problems caused by extreme weather events. This severely hinders our ability to facilitate critical environmental education.
We’ve identified three essential steps to solving this problem. By taking them, we can increase our critical education programmes using reliable Internet access. Further, by making more accurate assessments of the land we’re proposing planting on, we’ll be doing all we can to ensure food and trees planted will grow well. Of course, all the while we’ll also be creating safe habitats for wildlife, boosting biodioversity and reducing hunger, malnutrition and poverty. It’s proper life saving stuff.
We need your help to:
- Acquire a Starlink connection to gain reliable, unlimited, high-speed internet access.
- Boost our solar power and battery storage capabilities – we currently have only two small panels.
- Commission geospatial satellite data from Orbify to identify the best places to plant trees and crops and other data, which will help save lives.
A, B, and C = Digital Data Dependability!
In order to run Starlink efficiently, we need more power. Once we have that, the sky’s the limit for increasing our valuable workshops and ultimately, getting more trees in the ground.
Using Orbify’s satellite data reports will enable us to perform incredibly detailed analyses of the landscape, soil health, and moisture levels for the 1 million+ trees we’ve planted already. This data will streamline the selection of optimal planting sites using live measurements and assessments, providing up-to-date and historical environmental insights at the click of a button.
We’ll also be able to view historic data showing catastrophic flooding events, helping us furnish communities with life-saving emergency planning data. Additionally, we’ll have access to accurate information on waterways, the landscape and meteorological facts, enabling adaptation to any changes that may have occurred.
This ABC Data Dependability package will allow us to plan future planting with the best datasets available on Earth.
The £4,000 we need for this project must come from ring-fenced funds, which is why we’ve launched this campaign. While we recognise that your donations will not specifically plant trees, our team will ultimately be able to plant vast amounts more trees across Kenya. This digital technology boost will allow us to deliver the environmental education needed to ensure they grow to maturity!
Reforesting Kenya is doable but it has to be supported through education – securing the funds we need will give us a #WinWin for the world.
Visit WordForest.org/abc to make a donation today.
Thank you.
Tracey and The Team
