Fundraising Update!

We made it HALFWAY!!  As we inch closer to the $7,000 mark, I'd like to offer a big THANKYOU to our family, friends and supporters like you.  Because of you, we are seven thousand steps closer to making a difference to hundreds of children in Malawi!! 

Let's go all the way...... We can change the world!

With love,
Michael

A Special Post from Nature's Gift in Lilongwe, Malawi...

Hello from Nature’s Gift permaculture centre. We thought we should give you more of a background as to who we are and what we do.

The centre is a training and demonstration centre, run by our umbrella organisation, the Kusamala Institute of Agriculture & Ecology. The centre was founded in December 2009, primarily to serve as a demonstration area for permaculture/ agro-ecology techniques. We offer trainings to complement these demonstrations, and this has also developed into the apprenticeship scheme that we now offer. Our focus is environment, food and nutrition security.

Permaculture is many things to many people, but we most broadly see it as a method of sustainable agriculture that can enhance food production in Malawi, make greater use of the available inputs, and combat local environmental degradation and climate change. Malawi is a developing country and there is certainly poverty, but there are solutions. Given that agriculture employs 85% of the nation’s workers (DFID, Malawi climate change facts), our approach starts with agriculture as the main contributor to Malawi’s development. Improved techniques using agro-ecology can immediately “help small farmers to farm in ways that are less expensive and more productive” (Olivier de Schutter, special rapporteur on the right to food, 2010); it is these techniques that we display at our centre.

We divide our centre into several areas, or permaculture zones. We have household vegetable production close to our on-site living areas in addition to our commercial-scale organic garden. We have recently launched a successful vegetable box scheme in the last few months, adding to our well-established restaurant sales. These areas provide us with an income, but also access to a variety of tasty and nutritious foods: an unfortunate rarity in Malawi. We also have “food forests”, similar to orchards, that help us grow food year round, mimicking the productivity of nature even when the weather works against us. Our Zone 3 is where we grow our staple foods, such as maize, sorghum, millet and soya. It is in this zone that we are doing some of our most exciting work, demonstrating improved water harvesting techniques, the benefits of trees in agriculture (agroforestry) and alternatives to the traditional mono-cropping of maize. With food security and climate change an ever-present concern, these techniques will help our centre and our trainees demonstrate continued food security. In Zone 4 we have sustainable woodlots, where we plant and harvest our own trees. With deforestation another major dilemma for Malawi, we showcase the merits of planting trees for our own use, to replenish the natural stock, enhance our local soil fertility and fight climate change. Beyond zone 4, we leave nature to look after itself, with our centre performing a benign stewardship role. 

We are greatly looking forward to working with the children from Home of Hope. It’s a really exciting opportunity to have these kids for six months and train them to grow their own food in a sustainable and profitable way. We believe that their knowledge will be able to transform the way Home of Hope uses its land, and the health and nutrition of its inhabitants. With food one of the major concerns for many Malawians, we believe providing this solid foundation will set them on the right track as they grow up.

We also have other projects on the go, and if you keep up with our website, you can stay abreast of the news. We are growing our own Jatropha for biodiesel for our truck (although we use bike delivery as much as possible), conducting trainings with a local co-operative in many permaculture aspects, including bee-keeping, and training and demonstration developments in Dowa district for Jatropha, Moringa and Neem as tree planting with a financial benefit beyond the wood itself. With a little more time and hard work we hope to spread permaculture and its many facets throughout Malawi.

Thanks to Michael and Jared for their wonderful work on this amazing project. We hope it’s the first of many to come!

So, thanks for reading and I hope you feel like you know our centre a little more. Please let us know what you think about us and our programmes, and any support you can provide to the apprentice scheme is greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

The team at the Kusamala Institute of Agriculture & Ecology