Planting Gardens for the Future

2 days ago
2 min read

2024 was a bold year of community collaboration. We completed construction of The Girls Centre - a milestone!

"Change doesn’t happen through hope; it happens through action." ~ Wangari Maathai, Nobel Laureate

THANKS to the vision of Scattergood Architects, to the expertise of Africa SchoolHouse’s construction crew, to the work of 238 local skilled and unskilled workers in our community, and to many significant others who supported our work with great generosity.

We moved in December and welcomed students who participated in an 8-day training in permaculture/restorative agriculture. With a grant from Mainsprings we started the restoration of our 4 acres which were cow pastures for over a hundred years.

Students and staff learned firsthand the strategies and purpose behind regenerative agriculture - soil erosion, waste management and water conservation.

We dug water trenches - spreading, saving, and soaking water into the ground to improve water retention

in the soil.

We planted 450 indigenous fruit - legume and shade trees (mango, avocado, orange, banana, sugarcane, guava, tamarind, passion fruit, lemon, lime, papaya, jackfruit, gliricidia, leucaena, aloe vera, coffee, neem, moringa, grevillea, sea almond, bamboo, and ashoka trees).

We established gardens planting kale, lettuce, pumpkin, spinach, onions, tomatoes, peppers, and cabbages. With the recent rains we hope to be harvesting soon.

We plan to use our model for community trainings as many TGFT parents are farmers.

December 2024

February 2025

The Girls Centre is more relevant than ever with the powerful ripple effect of empowering girls with education. Our students continued to share their skills as coaches, teachers, interns, advocates and mentors with girls and boys in nearby schools. In 2024 we impacted 17,932 people in our community.

We are excited to begin 2025 connecting youth to nature, to one another other, to their discoveries of new ideas, skills and strengths. To everyone who helped make 2024 a year of action - all of us THANK YOU!