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Community Groups' Superb Progress
We are still 6 weeks from the end of the financial year and already the 47 self-help groups working with Excellent have smashed their annual targets, making superb progress towards our 2010 goals.
Excellent Development's ambitious but exciting plans are to have built 300 sand dams, planted 1 million trees and created 1,000 km of terracing by the year 2010. Currently we are over half-way on dams and terracing and nearly half-way on tree planting: ____________Annual Target_____Actual____Grand Total_______ Sand Dams..........43.....................49..................155 Trees..............176,000..............178,650.............481,127 Terraces...........196 km...............210 km.............644 km The combination of sand dams, terracing and tree planting will ensure that water is available year-round, significantly improving growing conditions for fruit and grain crops. 17 of the communities, who live in more marginal areas, have set up community seed banks, providing further security in the grain growing stakes. Each bank will be holding three seasons' worth of seed to insure a community against the drought and crop failure which is an all too frequent occurence in this part of the world. Each group is supported by regular visits from Excellent Development's field staff who advise on sustainable agriculture techniques to improve farm productivity. Our field officers have recently been evaluating the impact of our work in visits to farmers working with Excellent. Asked how life had been changed by working on the self-help projects, here are some of their responses: "Last year our animals had water to drink - before we had to take them to the river to drink and at times we would take them home without water, or we had to buy water for them at 2 shillings per gallon... Now I have a good harvest from last year and still have food in my store... I have been encouraging my children and telling them the importance of trees. They help take care of the trees, which have so many uses." - Angelina Kilala, Ukono SHG "I have realised what Dolichos [a cover crop] can do to the soil. The portion you see with healthy maize has improved as a result of planting Dolichos. I hardly harvested anything before, but now you can see what is happening. The maize has outgrown the others. The Dolichos improved the nutrient level of the soil... Terraces have done a great thing for me - water used to flow from the road through the farm, washing away all the seeds and crops after germination. Run-off water caused the collapse of my kitchen! Now today the water sinks into the soil and hardly any gets into the homestead." - Mrs Mutezi Mwilu, Munathi SHG "People never used to terrace here, I had only one terrace but now my whole farm is terraced. I can now easily get enough seeds to plant on my farm. I used not to plant well because I could not afford at times to plant the whole farm. I have learnt to intercrop, now I plant a diversity of crops, I never knew about sorghum and pearl millet. I had never eaten it. But now I do take it and I have taught my children the same and they now eat it too." - Peter Nduku, Iviani SHG
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