Open Hands Community Development Foundation

Open Hands Community Development Foundation is a Non-Profit local Organization established in Kenya to address the social, educational environmental, agricultural and economical challenges. The vision of this organization is to make sure all children have access to education and locally grown nutritional food. 

Many children are at a disadvantage due to economical strains, so they end up being abused, angry, and demotivated towards education and end up making wrong choices, which is our goal to make sure that doesn't happen. 

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JUNE 4-11, 2022 - Make a difference week and tree planting

NSHG successfully partnered with Society for Ecological Restoration (SER) for their event!!
The project site will be Nyamira County and you can click on the Kenyan map and locate Nyamira County.

Event outcome:
Title: Make a difference week and tree planting progressive reports.
Duration: May June 2022
Implementing Agency: Nyasemi Self Help Group in partnership with Society for Ecological Restoration and collaboration with The SOL Foundation™. 
Summary: Make a Difference Week, hosted by the Society for Ecological Restoration (SER), is an annual week of global restoration action where individuals and organizations from around the world host and participate in local volunteer restoration events. Through Make a Difference Week, Nyasemi Self Help Group had the opportunity to positively impact our local communities of Sironga and Ibucha Primary schools by engaging in hands-on restoration projects.
The main objective: 

• To sustain biodiversity, improve resilience in a changing climate, and re-establish an ecologically healthy relationship between nature and culture.
• To empower communities and the youth/school children to create a safer, healthier, cleaner, and greener environment through tree planting. 
• To alleviate poverty through building, strengthening, and empowering the communities to produce adequate amounts of food without destroying the environment.

Key Activities conducted: 

• Sensitization and Awareness creation on environmental conservation 
• Tree planting targeting schools through greening schools project. 
• Information sharing and network 
• Monitoring, Evaluation and Reporting

Target Group: The primary focus of this project are the communities and the schools. 400 students, the surrounding community staff and teachers of Sironga Primary School and Ibucha Primary School. The farmers in these communities constitute over 75% of the region’s population, with over 77% of this population being the youth who are less than 30 years of age and women constituting about 60%. Agricultural practices in this region are largely subsistence and marked by traditional approaches such as bush burning, deforestation and uninformed use of fertilizers. The explicit zones to be covered by this project will be Sironga and Ibucha Primary Schools, within Nyamira County of the republic of Kenya.
Impact of this project: 

• 4,000 trees planted in the two project sites. 
• Increased tree cover, reduced levels of air, soil, and water pollution, improved methods of waste disposal and reduced incidences of floods and drought.
• Over 1,200 and 100 school teachers are educated on the importance of environmental conservation, climate change and adaptation.
• 2 environmental clubs established in the said schools and over 1,200 students involved in environmental conservation activities.

Recommendation: 
The organization intends to use the following strategies will be used on a continuous process geared towards tree planting project and sustainability:

• Awareness Creation:  The school children and community will be sensitized on the causes and effects of climate change and consequently, the community needs to be enlightened on environmental dangers associated with traditional farming, human activities, and the availability of alternative farming approaches. To achieve this, we shall employ different methods and media which will include: school talks, TV and Radio talk shows, public rallies, field days, church gatherings, posters, social media, and visits to existing farmers’ groups. During this stage, interested students and farmers are assisted to form manageable clubs and groups respectively and the training details and action plans are set. This will also entail debates and writing competitions on climate change by school children at different levels.
• Tree planting Tree planting activities will be done in schools and the communities within the region. School children and the community members will actively participate in the exercise and be encouraged to nurture the trees for posterity. Different varieties of trees will be planted ranging fruit trees to hard wood trees. Restoration tree planting in forests together with the surrounding community members will be part of this exercise.
• Training of farmers:  The farmers will be trained on varied aspects of sustainable farming, soil and water management, plastics and polythene management. The training's will embody discussions, sharing of experiences, demonstrations of skills and best practices, and participatory on-farm experience. The key concepts for the training will include: 

1. Techniques for soil improvement 
2. Methods of Soil Conservation 
3. Crop Rotation and Farm Management 
4. Crop Diversity 
5. Agroforestry and Environment Conservation 
6. Water Harvesting and Home Technologies 
7. Animal Husbandry in relation to animal welfare 
8. Renewable energies 
9. Plastics and polythene management

• Follow-Up of farmers:  Continuous engagement with the farmers will enable smooth transition to sustainable practices. These regular visits will provide guidance, advice and motivation to the farmers. These will also boost the community members in coming up with varied sustainable livelihood initiatives. This follow-up exercise will open new ground for demonstration farm visits by different community farmers’ groups and substantially enhance the sharing of best practices.
•  Information sharing and Networking:  We hope to work very closely with other like-minded institutions and organizations to improve on efficiency in service delivery. Through these approaches, we will learn from the works of others which will enable us to play a complementary role to others and mitigate duplication. We hope to participate in relevant meetings, conferences and workshops to gather knowledge and information, and strengthen our practice within the sector. We hope to be part of the policy preparation and change, advocacy and public awareness on topical issues across the different networks. We will share the relevant experiences, ideas and information gathered during our discussions with the school children and community members through different strategies including print and online media and consequently enable the farmers to share their views, feelings and ideas.

Monitoring, Evaluation and Reporting:  The project activities will be followed up regularly, documented, reported, and discussed by the management and staff on a progressive basis. The records will be stored and prepared for auditing. Progress and general reports will be safely kept and only shared with the boards, the funding agencies, and other relevant partners and subsequently used for project evaluations. We shall evaluate our project success annually and assess the extent to which the annual targets are met. During this stage, we will analyze the project enablers and challenges and lay ground for the following year.