Climate Action in Education: Planting 10,000 Trees

Dear Donor,

Thank you so much for your continued support of our Climate Action Project!

In our last report, we had shared with you the progress we had made at Central Primary School. Over the past few months, we were able to expand the work of this project to include Elimu de Ark Primary School and some private schools. In this report, we will be highlighting some of the work we started with Elimu de Ark which has now culminated in their own mini botanical garden in their school!! And thanks to the long rain season in Kisumu, the garden is thriving!! We will also be sharing some updates on the trees we planted last year and how they are doing!!

How it all started at Elimu de Ark

Earlier this year, the students of Grade 4-8 from Elimu de Ark visited the RKF Mini Botanical Garden to attend their first set of Climate Action Workshops. During these workshops we learnt and discussed the importance of becoming stewards of the surroundings we live in. We discussed how each one of us, whether at school or home, had a role to play in climate action. The students also completed fun and engaging activities like a scavenger hunt, garden tour and soil experiments in which they learnt about different types of soil and how to create optimal soil conditions for tree planting. Each student also received a seedling of their own to grow and care.

They then formed six different groups: Champions, Tigers, Achievers, Salamander, Lion and Purple Lilies! Each group received a small seed bed which would be their collective responsibility.

Seed Bed Update

The seed beds each group was assigned were showered with love, care and water! Four weeks after the workshops, we visited them and as you can see in the picture shared below, their okra seedlings looked healthy and would be ready for transplantation in a few weeks.

We were so impressed with the enthusiasm of the students at Elimu de Ark, we decided to do a special field trip to a very unique lakeside garden in Dunga with them to grow their interest in tree planting and environmental stewardship.

Lakeside Garden Visit

This was an incredible day out, next to the lake surrounded by nature.

Apart from being fun, it was also a day full of learning. Our teacher of the day, Jared, took us around the garden and taught us about various plants we hadn’t seen before. Not only that, we also learnt how to propagate them!

One propagation process that surprised and awed us was coconuts! We learnt that it takes about 6-8 months for a coconut seed to sprout. And the incredible amount of patience (10+ years) you need before you can harvest.

Our day ended with a beautiful boat ride in Lake Victoria where we learnt more about the biodiversity of the area: like the birds, hippos, crocodiles, trees etc. in and around the shores of the second largest freshwater lake in the world.

Elimu de Ark’s Garden

All of this led to the beginning of an incredible process where we partnered with a local corporate to create Elimu de Ark’s very own mini botanical garden. This incredible garden transformation deserves a report of its own, which we will be sharing next (stay tuned!). In this report, we are sharing a sneak peak of the transformation of one section of the garden where students planted a variety of vegetables.

More than ever, growing your own food is becoming a universal practice that many are taking up and benefitting from. Kitchen gardens are now becoming a common source of food for many families, especially since the lockdowns. Apart from that, one of the growing concerns is that many children don’t actually know where the food they are consuming comes from.

As part of our Community Garden project at Elimu De Ark, we installed 3 vegetable patches, 2 vertical gardening bags and 1 conical garden. The bags and patches were planted with leafy green seedlings such as spinach, cabbage, sukuma wiki (collard greens) and fruits and vegetables like broccoli, egg plants, capsicum, strawberries etc. During this process, Team RKF trained the students and teachers on how to set up, plant, harvest and take care of their kitchen garden.

The good news: the spinach seedlings that were planted are now ready for harvest and will be cooked for all students during one of their lunches! We couldn’t be happier!!

Tree Update

Thanks to your incredible generosity last year, we planted several papaya trees and a banana tree during Earth Day 2021 in our mini botanical garden. Just a little over a year has passed and we are so delighted to share that our papaya trees are now fruiting and ready for harvest! Our banana tree just produced its first bunch that we are watching every single day in anticipation of the mature fruits. Asante Sana for the amazing support you gave this incredible project. The mini botanical garden has been a wonderful site of giving back to nature, teaching and learning… much more than we had ever anticipated.

Story from our Volunteer

Ruth was a part of our Volunteers Program last year. During her six weeks with RKF she was a part of the volunteers’ team that packed and distributed more than two thousand education packs to students in Kisumu.

She says, “My six weeks began in July 2021 and I had some of the best and memorable moments. I learnt a lot about The Rahul Kotak Foundation and its programs. The environment program helped me learn botanical and common names of plants in the garden and how to take care of them. During distributions I had the chance to interact with teachers and students from different schools which helped me understand the needs of various communities.

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