Strengthening our connection to Earth has the ability to ignite our inner leadership, spirituality, and foster community. All around the world, TPP grantees utilize the richness of what nature has bestowed on us to transform food systems, build economic stability and save native plants from extinction.
Creating solutions to uplevel the lives of others involves outside resources, but we can not forget the gifts that already exist around us. TPP grantees execute true sustainability by creating and restoring what is already provided and building systems from there. We hope these projects inspire you to witness the beauty and abundance that is thriving around us.
Kingston Msukwa – Community Empowerment – Life Rescuing (LIRE) Project
Malawi is ranked as the third poorest country on earth. Most of its citizens cannot even afford to earn even 1 dollar per week and as a result of this, HIV and AIDS has taken advantage of poverty to make poor people more desperate. Sleeping on empty bellies for a number of days and lacking nutritious food has resulted in more early deaths than it should be. Rumphi district is one of such places where this has been on the rampant and yet the place is full of locally found resources that can turn things upside down. And this is the case elsewhere else in Malawi.
There are good fertile soils in most parts of the country and plenty of rivers which flow all seasons without drying. In addition to this, the people are by nature already farmers who simply needs to be taught new farming methods and how to better manage the already available resources at their disposal. It is from this background that Life Rescuing Project (LIREP) comes in to rescue lives of poor dying people. What LIREP will be doing is simple.
Using a grant from The Pollination Project, Farmers Clubs will be established in key places of Rumphi District starting with the village of Principal Chief Chigwere Kumwenda. LIREP will in this area buy land and establish a farmers training farm, where volunteers will be farming with new farming methods obtained from various agriculture experts and the skills earned to train local people in various communities. The local people shall through LIREP be trained on how to use the already locally available resources, like land and water, to improve their living standards financially as well as their eating style. We believe this will then reduce untimely deaths and the number of orphans and widows we normally see. What LIREP will be doing will eventually foster long missing development in the entire district and the nation at large.
Aadya Joshi – The Right Green – Native Biodiversity Education & Gardens
Initiated by high school student Aadya Joshi, The Right Green is an initiative that aims to spread awareness about the vital role of native plants in supporting local fauna, like insects, birds and small animals, and facilitate community action towards its restoration.
Today we are in the midst of the sixth mass extinction of species. One of the important causes is the loss of natural habitats and native plants. Native plants serve as a vital food source for insects, which in turn are food for other species like birds and small animals. Hence the loss of native plants and their replacement with exotic, non-native plants has a cascading effect that results in a significant decline in biodiversity.
Through a specially developed curriculum that includes games and other activities, The Right Green seeks to spread this awareness to elementary and middle school students in Mumbai, and spur them to action. To stem the decline in local fauna in our cities, The Right Green has initiated a growing database of native plant species in India that support the largest number of local species. The Right Green also plans to conduct workshops to encourage and educate local citizens and municipal authorities to choose native plants for their yards, gardens and in the city, and hence help restore its native biodiversity. The grant will enable The Right Green to develop its website and curriculum-related materials in English and regional languages.
Environment And Food Foundation (E2F) – Mangroves Biodiversity Reforestation Campaign In Cameroon
Mangroves Biodiversity Reforestation Campaign in Cameroon aims to bring the fight against deforestation and unsustainable exploitation of natural mangroves forest resources in this park to the forefront. Centered near the Douala-Edea National Park, this project raises environmental awareness among indigenous people via environmental sensitization campaigns.
The project also plants hundreds of mangroves trees species in the degraded portions of the park via series of reforestation campaigns.
Black Earth Farms Family – Guerilla Farming Into Land Sovereignty
The Black Earth Farms Collective is an agroecological ‘lighthouse’ organization composed of skilled Pan-African and Pan-Indigenous farmers, spiritual leaders, builders, healers, and educators who spread ancestral knowledge and train community members to build collectivized, autonomous, and chemical free food systems in urban and peri-urban environments throughout the Greater East San Francisco Bay Area, which is occupied Ohlone land. Our work regenerates our community’s connection to and reverence for land and agriculture, which was severed from our ancestors through colonial violence, and removed from our elders through multinational corporate exploitation.
Our mission is to establish complete food sovereignty in the East Bay by creating a truly local food system independent of industrial agriculture.
One of our main priorities is ensuring low-income and houseless communities in Berkeley, Oakland, Emeryville, and Richmond have consistent access to culturally relevant healthy food and natural medicine including, herbs, flowers, mushrooms, cannabis and hemp. Our long term mission is to have a sovereign land base where we can create community, steward land in relationship with our ancestors, and organize and exchange knowledge to dismantle oppressive forces.
Ellen Savude & Stella Galamo – One Urban Garden
Founded by Ellen Savude – One Urban Garden is on a mission to radically transform urban food systems, by building and operating farms that utilize unused urban space to grow safe, healthy food in a sustainable and socially responsible way. We hope to change the way food is grown and distributed in cities and, in the process, reconnect people with the story of food from farm to table.
With the rise of urbanization in Africa, One Urban Garden intends to provide affordable fresh produce in cities, educate more Africans about the practice and to provide new job opportunities for young people.
Horticulture Therapy – Horticulture Therapy For Intellectually Challenged Kids
Located in Bengaluru, India, Horticulture Therapy for Intellectually Challenged Kids aims to establish a plant nursery for in house sapling cultivation, create two campus garden, manufacture tiny planters, and produce plant gift baskets. Vocational and therapy activities have proven positive results in the rehabilitation and training of an intellectually challenged person.
Outdoor, group activities, activities in the garden acts as a stimulant to the brain and also physically, encourages peer understanding, encourages social skills among others.
Ecosiembra Una Vía A La Agroecología
Ecosiembra is a peasant work team, accompanied by agricultural technicians and social workers who try to train peasant families, both those in the mountains and the farmers of the Cibao Valley.
The importance of this work lies in the fact that it creates an alternative vision to agribusiness, a new kind of agriculture that rescues ancestral values and knowledge, including the protection of the environment within productive processes; a new agriculture for everyone’s life.
The Ecosiembra team promotes the production of healthy food through the production of organic fertilizer so that farmers recover the life of the soil, improve their living conditions and get involved in the promotion of productive units that are supplementary to the ecosystems, protect the environment and arouse tenderness with animals within a new culture of life.
