Project Greening Uganda - Planting a million trees this year!
A fantastic initiative by 34 year old Ugandan Joseph Atwongyeire set up to reforest parts of Uganda on a large scale by growing a million young trees in a nursery. He decided to fight the local land degradation and help in the fight against global warming. His first million trees are just the start, but Joseph needs help to get his first million trees in the ground.
How does it work?
The set-up is simple, with little investment a million tree saplings are grown from seeds and irrigated till they can be planted in assigned areas. Local communities are involved in the planning and assignment of locations for planting. Local labor, mainly women make a small living out of helping during the nursery stage of the saplings. This phase can be carries out for about 15 Ugandan shilling (UGX) or about 0,37 eurocents per sapling. Schools and volunteers are involved in the planting phase (the rainy season, normally from half September to half December, which can be done for about 50 UGX or approximately 1,1 eurocent per tree including all costs for tools, transport, supervision etc.
We are supporting Joseph
Joseph has asked (a bit late...) for support as a drought was more intense and his project, done with almost nothing, was in danger. Rob de Laet (NL) and Hans Joergen Rasmussen (NO) involved in Saving Our Planet project decided to come to his aid and we have been supporting Joseph recently to help him keep his million young trees alive, but more help is needed. Now Wout Tilders and Guido Weers (both from NL) are helping with getting the project known and get the funds together to make the pilot project of a million trees, to be planted befor the rest of the year, a success.
Pilot Project
The pilot project near the village of Kigezi is under way and is aiming at planting one million trees this year (!) from seedlings that have already been grown in a nursery. The planting area is in Rukungiri District, Rubabo county in the area around the village of Kigezi. We have so far earmarked an estimated thousand acres. Communities that have been approached by Greening Uganda, have all accepted the invitation to replant areas. We have also included schools and churches. Many schools have many utilized land in the back yards and school compound and churches as well. All areas subscripted will cover about 60% of the available seedlings or 600.000 seedlings Transplanting will be done between October and November. By end of rains in December we expect to have planted these 1000 acres.
About Joseph, the initiator
Joseph is a 34 year old Ugandan who was very worried by the local deforestation and illegal logging and how this was affecting his area and decided to do something about it. He was also extremely worried about global warming of which he read more and more and decided he wanted to do his part to protect the planet against the destructive impact of humans. Joseph is an eco-warrior, a concerned citizen and a global citizen. He built tree seedling nursery and started with collected seeds with his goal to plant a million trees locally. His enthusiasm brought him to get schools and villages to appoint grounds to plant the trees and get voluntaries to start helping him in the planting season. Later, he realized both that he lacked planning and funds, but also that he could scale up and replicate his project and reverse deforestation in Uganda.
Please help Joseph realizing his goal. We promise that all donations will invested 1:1 in projects of Greening Uganda and we will inform you about the progess we make! Thank you!