Branching Out: Tree Planting and Social Resilience

Andando’s Keur Socé Tree Nursery supporting Senegal’s National Tree Day with the contribution of 750 trees!

Thanks to support from the Rick Steves’ Climate Smart Commitment Andando’s two tree nurseries, in Keur Socé and Podor, are now producing tens of thousands of native and fruit trees each year to support partner gardens, schools, health centers, and microloan recipients.

Our team has embraced the challenge of expanding tree planting in partner communities, and their efforts are not going unnoticed. The government’s Water and Forest Guard recently asked Andando to provide trees and logistical support for Senegal’s National Tree Day, and we are now an officially accredited Civil Society Organization with the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification!

Tree project coordinator, Francois, with Technician Badiane inside the Keur Socé Tree Nursery. So far this year, our tree program has produced 48,092 trees.

Andando is stepping up in the fight against climate change while keeping the same people-centered approach that has always guided us. The scale of tree planting needed in Senegal alone is daunting. It will take millions upon millions of trees, which must be produced, transported, planted, cared for, and protected to maturity. This monumental undertaking not only requires community buy-in, but in a larger sense for there to be communities present who have the people and means to participate in these efforts.

Thanks to Rick Steves’ Climate Smart Commitment for generously supporting this project!

Andando staff loading tree saplings for a tree planting day in Togane. Our Regional Tree Nurseries provide trees for schools, health centers, gardens, and families.

While Andando is not yet on the scale of millions of trees, this is the lens through which we are approaching our contribution and why we believe so strongly in a holistic approach to community development. Our partners in the northern region of Podor have arguably the greatest need for large-scale tree planting, but we can’t bypass their other needs. For tree planting to succeed communities must be strong, which is why we are working to first ensure that villages of indigenous pastoralists have the water, food security, education, and health resources they need to stay on their ancestral lands.

Andando staff loading tree saplings for a tree planting day in Togane. Our Regional Tree Nurseries provide trees for schools, health centers, gardens, and families.

Strengthening these communities is the first step to environmental restoration enabling indigenous populations to participate as powerful partners in our global fight against climate change.

From the Director - April 2024

Greetings from Senegal! I am currently here working with the our team to finalize our projects for 2024, so stay tuned to hear about all the exciting new partnerships that your support is making possible.

Thiam, Andando’s Podor Programs Manager, meeting with the village of Mbida to formalize our partnership to build a new health post.

In the meantime, we have some incredible news out of Podor where we have broken ground on our 15th health post in the remote village of Mdiba! This project has been in the works for a long time, and thanks to your incredible support during our year-end giving campaign, along with the continued generosity of Hub City Church, we were able to say yes to this community! We gave them the good news over the phone, but the conversation didn’t get very far as everyone started cheering and celebrating.

This currently barren land will be the site of another life-changing health post. What is now dusty and dry will become a bright, cheerful, and safe place for expectant mothers to give birth with the support of experienced midwives.

Andando’s newest partner garden in Wouro Kelle is off to an incredible start harvesting over 5,000 lbs. of produce already in their very first season! Their dedication and hard work is proof of how much our partners value this opportunity and why we must keep pushing into more remote and underserved areas where few if any other NGO’s are operating.

Fatou Sékke shows off her harvest for the day. Over 5,000 pounds of produce has already been harvested by the women of Wouro Kelle in their very first season!

“We are really happy with this garden. We grow so many vegetables and all organic. We notice now our health is improving.”

— Fatou Ibra Sékke

Lastly, thanks to the help of Rick Steves Climate Smart Commitment, our tree nurseries in both Podor and Keur Soce are starting to produce tens of thousands of native tree seedlings to support our gardens and regional reforestation efforts. Climate change is hitting Senegal hard, and our partner communities have asked us to help them to regreen the Sahel. We could not be happier to be able to support them in this ambitious goal.

All of Andando’s partner communities are coming together this year with the goal of planting 100,000 trees!

Thank you for everything that you are doing to help our partner communities to thrive.

Andando's Podor Tree Nursery is open for business!

We are thrilled to report that our tree nursery in Podor is now complete! This project is the result of years of planning and coordination with local villages, community leaders, and government agencies who all want to use trees to help fight climate change. Podor is located on Senegal’s northern border with Mauritania, in an ecological transition zone south of the Sahara Desert known as the Sahel. It is a harshly beautiful landscape which is home to nearly 500,000 people who now find themselves on the front lines of climate change. As rainfall patterns change and the oppressive hot season intensifies, reforestation of native trees is one of the most effective tools to hold soil on the land and prevent desertification.

The indigenous communities of the region remember when Podor used to have millions more trees which supported both people and livestock. Andando’s partner communities came together to ask us to help them to “re-green” Podor and this tree nursery is the first step in achieving that ambitious goal. None of this would have been possible without the support of the Rick Steves’ Climate Smart Commitment who awarded Andando a grant to build the infrastructure. We also want to thank the village Chief of Donaye Taredji, Mr. Nazzir, for facilitating the community land donation, along with our amazing field staff who worked so hard to shepherd this project through to completion.

Andando’s partner community of Togane has struggled to start trees locally due to the harsh conditions of the deforested landscape.

Andando received $30,000 from Rick Steves’ Climate Smart Commitment for this project!

The nursery is about half an acre in size with a perimeter chain-link fence, three watering basins and 10 shade structures. We plan to produce roughly 50,000 tree seedlings here each year, which requires a lot of water, so we drilled a 150’ deep borehole well on the property and installed the same solar pump system that we use in our gardens. We are thrilled with how everything turned out, and can’t wait to see this space filled with new tree seedlings!

So what happens now? Completing infrastructure is a great first step, but the end goal isn’t to build things, or even to start seedlings; in order to make a meaningful impact we need to successfully establish hundreds of thousands of native trees in the coming years. Andando cannot and should not do this on our own, so this past December we held meetings with village chiefs and women’s garden leaders from around the region to develop a community driven collaborative reforestation plan which meets the economic, ecological, and cultural goals of all stakeholders in the area. We also engaged in this same process in Keur Soce so that our first tree nursery can ramp up production and make a bigger impact in our partner communities there as well.

Community involvement at all levels of project planning, implementation, and evaluation is essential to Andando’s approach.

The only way that we can achieve our climate goals is by aligning them with the needs and desires of the people living in affected areas.

It has been a long road to get to this point, and we are still only at the beginning, but the possibilities are incredible. The challenges of combatting climate change can feel endless, but today we have one more tool to help us in this fight, and one more big reason for hope.

Slowly but surely the village of Togane is planting trees to help establish their regenerative permaculture garden. This year thanks to the new tree nursery they will plant at least an additional 500 native trees creating a self-sustaining oasis that improves nutrition, household income, and quality of life.

From the Director - October 2023

·       A potential new partner school in the neighboring commune of Ndiedieng, next to Keur Soce.

40 gardens, 14 health posts, 65 classrooms, 45 latrines, and over 2,000 microloans to date.  These numbers are impressive but what is the real limit of what we can do together?  How many more people can we reach?  How can we grow without losing the personal touch and care that has made Andando so uniquely successful?  What is next for Andando? These are questions that I ask myself constantly and with the completion of our 40th garden this feels like an important moment to step back, take stock, and share our vision for the future.  

Some of the amazing Podor team standing in front of our newly completed tree nursery, which will drastically increase the rate at which we can build new gardens.

It is nothing short of miraculous what Andando has been able to achieve over the past 15 years, but there is still so much more work to do. We’ve been in the incubator together, so to speak, building a community of supporters and developing our methods and partnerships.  What we do works, and we have a moral imperative now to reach as many communities in need as we can.

The incredible Keur Soce team after a strategic planning training this past August.

To this end we are investing in our local staff, who have always been key to our success, building their capacity and giving them the tools and training to tackle larger projects in the future.  We are working with regional government leaders to assess our current impacts and develop long-term plans to address the remaining needs in Keur Soce and Podor. And we are looking for Andando’s next region, or regions, to expand into, where our unique and dedicated approach can impact even more remote and neglected communities.  

Podor Tree Program Manager Alassane Ba (Gorgui), taking our new office computer for a test drive.

We are poised and ready to expand and there has never been a better, or a more needed time to support Andando.  Whether through the auction, monthly contributions, volunteering, or spreading the word, your support is not just another drop in the bucket, it directly impacts what we do every day and how big our vision for the future can be.

“Jéréjëf!” – Thank You!

- Garrison Harward, Executive Director

Update from the Field

I have just returned from Senegal and there is far too much good news to wait for the next newsletter!  We were fortunate to have good weather during the trip, not a guarantee in the rainy season, so we were able to see most of the new projects that we’re working on and how they’re coming together.  This is just a quick overview so stay tuned for more in-depth information soon on all of these amazing projects!

Garrison and Gorgui standing with our new deep borehole well in the desert.

In the Keur Soce area work is nearly complete on our first ever school garden at Keur Soce High School.  The fence, basins, and storehouse are done, leaving only the water connection to our nearby Thiako garden whose members are generously contributing their water to the school.  We are so excited that this will be the first high school in all of Senegal with an integrated aquaculture training program!  Work should be completed here by the end of the month, and we will share more pictures when classes start in October and garden activities begin.

The completed garden storehouse stands in front of the beautiful Keur Soce High School classrooms.

A fish basin inside Keur Soce High School Garden with Mandaw, Garden Program Manager.

Watering basins will be connected to the aquaculture system so that nutrient rich fish water can be used to water crops in the garden.

Renovations begin at Mbadhiou Peulh Primary School.

Also in Keur Soce we got to see the beginning of renovations of three classrooms at Mbadhiou Peulh Primary School.  The local municipal government is constructing two new classrooms here this year but didn’t have the means to upgrade the existing classroom building which has a leaking roof and cracked walls. So at the request of the village Andando stepped in to renovate the current classrooms so that all students will have a safe and proper learning environment for years to come.  We will also be adding a new block of latrines hare as well this fall!

Students from Mbadhiou Peulh Primary School in one of the classrooms that is now being renovated.

Adjacent to the existing classrooms is a temporary classroom where some students have to study in difficult conditions.

Due to the collaboration between the community and Andando all students will now study in proper safe and secure classrooms.

Madame Sekk, the head nurse of the regional hospital, facilitates a community meetings in the village of Bida in preparation to start construction on a new health post there.

In Podor we finished the selection process for our next health post which will be built in the rural community of Bida.  This village is dedicated to community health with several healthcare workers already operating a seasonal clinic here out of temporary structures which must be rebuilt each year.  We are proud to be working with such dedicated partners and can’t wait to see the impact that a proper health post will have on their ability to care for their community. We will share more about the incredible story of this village when we start construction here in November.

A boy from Togane stands with the papaya tree he helped plant this spring.

We are also nearly finished with construction on our new tree nursery and agroforestry center in Podor.  Our borehole well drilling was a complete success, and we now have a high output water source with a solar well pump system which will enable us to produce a minimum of 50,000 beneficial native trees here each year.  With these tree we will be able to speed up the implementation of new gardens and provide trees to all of our schools, health posts, and partner communities to bolster their food security, improve quality of life, and help them to restore the ecology of their lands. 

Photo Descriptions: 1) Clean fresh water flows from our new well in the Podor Tree Nursery. 2) Fruit tree seedlings in the Keur Soce Tree Nursery, which has started over 15,000 trees this year! 3) Podor Tree Nursery complete with basins, storehouse, water reservoir, solar panels, and restrooms. 4) A woman from Togane stands proudly with her Moringa trees. This is the first time that this village has ever had access to this miraculous and nutritious tree.

The children of Wouro Kelle verifying the water system. This garden draws water from the local river which turns brown from runoff during the rainy season.

Last but certainly not least we visited the community of Wouro Kelle to see the completion of Andando’s 40th garden!!  We are privileged to have this dedicated and deserving community join Andando at such a wonderful milestone and we can’t wait to share their story with you. Stay tuned for the next newsletter where we will profile Wouro Kelle and tell you more about the impact that this garden will have there. We would never have gotten to this point, or be able to reach such remote villages as this, without the steadfast support of our dedicated community of donors and volunteers over the past 15 years. Our hats off to you!

The women of Wourou Kelle celebrate the completion of their new garden.

It’s hard to believe but it’s already “Auction Season” for Andando, and if any of these projects resonated with you, please consider contributing in some way to help make the auction a success! We always have many more projects up for consideration than we can accomplish each year, and the success of the auction is the deciding factor on much of our yearly programing.  Whether you can help by volunteering, donating auction items, spreading the word to new potential donors, or attending and bidding on some of our amazing auction items, we appreciate your support so that we can continue this vital work in Senegal. 

Please consider contributing through our annual auction fundraiser. Whether you can help by volunteering, donating auction items, spreading the word to new potential donors, or attending and bidding on some of our amazing auction items, we appreciate your support so that we can continue this vital work in Senegal.  More info at www.andando.org/events.

From the Director - July 2023

We are on a roll! It feels appropriate that with the lush growth of another rainy season, so many projects are coming to fruition for Andando. 

The inauguration of Seno Bowal Health Post, Andando’s 14th overall.

Our Seno Bowal health post, Andando’s 14th overall, was officially inaugurated on May 10th, and the first baby was born there less than a month later! This post was entirely funded by generous donations from Hub City Church, and we are so proud to be partnering with them to create life saving access to maternal healthcare in rural communities. 

Midwives and nurses standing outside the newly renovated health post in Thiemene Taba.

We are thrilled to report that the repairs of our first health post, Thiamene Taba, are complete as well! Altrusa International of Albany helped us to realize this rapid response to the damage that occurred here during the last rainy season, ensuring that this post will continue to serve the area for years to come.

Drilling the borehole in Podor for the new native tree nursery.

In Podor we successfully drilled our first borehole well in the desert last month, which is a crucial milestone towards building our new native tree nursery and agroforestry center.  This location will soon produce 50,000 beneficial trees each year thanks to a grant from Rick Steve’s Europe!

Workers frame up the rebar for the concrete aquaculture basin in the Keur Soce High School STEM garden. Construction is nearly complete on our first-ever school garden at Keur Soce High School, which will be the first high school in all of Senegal with an integrated aquaculture training program.

Back in Keur Soce work is nearly finished on our first ever school garden at Andando’s Keur Soce High School, which will be the first high school in all of Senegal with an integrated aquaculture training program.  We are still seeking funding to hopefully build a laboratory, classroom, library, and computer lab to continue to support this amazing school.

Breaking ground at Andando’s 40th(!!) garden located in the extremely isolated community of Wouro Kelle.

And last but not least, in the community of Wouro Kelle we just broke ground on Andando’s 40th garden!  Wow!! We never could have gotten to this point without the generous support of so many amazing people who partner with us year after year to help the people of Senegal. On behalf of all of our staff and partner communities,

The Best Time To Plant A Tree?

Established trees in the Lamarame Garden help fortify the soil and protect from harsh weather conditions.

…was 20 years ago. The second-best time is now! This old proverb still rings true, especially for our work in Senegal’s northern region of Podor. This part of the Sahel has been devastated by deforestation, and with climate change leading to longer hotter dry seasons, it feels like the Sahara Desert is right next door.

The village of Belel Kelle, in the northern region of Senegal, experiences longer and hotter dry seasons due to deforestation and climate change.

Starting a garden in this environment is a leap of faith and planting a tree is an act of defiance, that we need not accept what is, we can create a better life for ourselves and the world around us.

At the Ouro Madiaw Garden established trees, such as mangoes, papayas, and bananas, improve the soil while protecting the people and crops from harsh conditions.

Trees are the foundation of every Andando garden. They protect people and crops from harsh conditions, raise ground water levels, build new fertile topsoil, and create permanent barriers against livestock. Trees keep Andando gardens flourishing year after year without any synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, or herbicides, and help infrastructure to last as long as possible so that upkeep is gradual and manageable at the local level.

Live-fencing provides the same soil regenerating benefits as other trees while also creating a permanent barrier against livestock and making upkeep gradual and manageable.

To date Andando has established over 50,000 native trees in our gardens and surrounding communities. That’s not only incredible for our partners but represents a huge amount of carbon sequestered out of the atmosphere!

Planting and tending to the seedlings sheltered inside the Tree Nursery in Keur Soce. A second nursery will be built in Podor, the northern region of Senegal, next month.

We are breaking ground next month on a new tree nursery in Podor so that we can expand and accelerate our tree planting program. This location will soon produce tens of thousands of trees year round helping to jump-start new gardens and allow Andando to begin reforesting this vital region on the front lines of climate change. The time is now, and we are excited to get to work!

Andando Receives Climate Smart Commitment Grant from Rick Steves’ Europe

We are thrilled to announce that Andando has been awarded a $30,000 grant, through Rick Steves’ Climate Smart Commitment, for the construction of a tree nursery and agroforestry center in the Podor region of northern Senegal, West Africa. Rick Steves is a popular public television host, a best-selling guidebook author, and an outspoken activist who encourages Americans to broaden their perspectives through travel. Their Climate Smart Commitment is an initiative to help mitigate the environmental impacts of travel by investing in non profits that work directly on climate smart agriculture, conservation, and agroforestry in underdeveloped countries. We are excited to join this initiative and provide a way for thoughtful travelers to create positive lasting change through their journeys around the world.

Communities in Podor are enduring longer, hotter dry seasons as a result of deforestation and climate change.

The Podor region, on Senegal’s northern border with Mauritania, is on the front lines of the climate crisis and represents a particularly vital area for ecological conservation. Hundreds of years of destructive colonial agricultural practices, deforestation, and overgrazing have led to severe top soil loss and increasing desertification of the region. This coupled with higher temperatures and disrupted rainfall patterns, due to climate change, makes life extremely difficult for the people who live here.

The site of an Andando garden before construction.

The same location 5 years later after establishing over 800 beneficial trees!

Andando’s primary tool to support communities and restore local ecology is our women’s cooperative garden initiative. Our gardens create lush oases’ in harsh landscapes, and provide permanent sources for income and nutrition for thousands of women and their families, all while sequestering substantial amounts of carbon out of the atmosphere. This is possible because Andando gardens do not use any pesticides, herbicides, or synthetic fertilizers, relying instead on a host of regenerative permaculture techniques, including the establishment of at least 500 beneficial and native trees in each garden!

A proud garden member in the Kouthieye women’s garden showing off her plot which is filled with beneficial trees.

Our Keur Soce Tree Program Manager, Francois, surveying the nursery after a day of seeding.

The tree nursery and agro-forestry center that we are building with this grant will help Andando to establish more women’s gardens at a faster pace. We set a lofty goal of reforesting 100,000 native trees over the next two years which will allow us not only to support our own gardens but to plant a substantial number of trees in the surrounding communities to fight deforestation and climate change. We are already well on our way with over 15,000 trees started in our Keur Soce region so far this year. Once the new Podor tree nursery is operational as well, we expect to meet and even exceed our goal! After over a year of preparations we are excited to be breaking ground in May!

““This grant from Rick Steves’ Europe is allowing us to do something that our partner communities in northern Senegal have been wanting to do for years.  There is so much excitement around this project that the Chief of Donnaye Teredji, the village where the tree nursery will be located, doubled the size of the plot they’re giving us in the hopes that Andando will have room to increase production in the years to come.” ”

— Garrison Harward, Andando Executive Director

Our sincerest thanks to Rick Steves’ Europe for their generous contribution to this project. We will be sure to keep you updated as construction begins and as we continue to expand our programs to fight climate change in the Sahel, for the benefit of our partner communities and all of us around the world.

Click here to learn more about our women’s cooperative garden initiative.

From the Team - July 2022

A rare moment when three of our US-based staff (Lewis, Garrison, and Crystal) are in Senegal at the same time.

We had the rare pleasure of having three of our US-based staff in Senegal at the same time! This allowed us to dive deep with our team on the ground there and make BIG plans for the future.

We were honored to help cut the ribbon at the official opening ceremony for Keur Soce High School!

Keur Soce High School is finishing up its first year of classes, and with enrollment increasing we finalized plans with the administration to construct an additional two classrooms to meet their current need. We also discussed the possibility of adding a school garden in the future with an attached science classroom to help boost their science curriculum.

After only six months since launching the aquaculture program, the fish are big enough to harvest. Each of the pilot gardens received advanced training, which will help them move towards self-sufficiency and reap the maximum benefits from the project.

In the gardens, we got to witness the first fish harvest from our pilot aquaculture program! The women and technicians have worked so hard to learn this new skill, and we couldn’t be happier to celebrate their success with them.

Fresh fish is hard to come by in these arid regions of Senegal. But now garden participants enjoy the nutritional benefits of fresh fish while also seeing their gardens bursting through the use of water from the fish ponds for their plants.

In Podor we met with local leaders to plan a permanent tree nursery which will allow us to grow thousands of beneficial trees where they are desperately needed.

These trees will become live fencing that will protect gardens from animals and wind. Over time metal fencing deteriorates, but live fencing is sustainable and provides long-term protection while helping to improve the soil.

These are just a few examples of the amazing things our team is working on, and we are so excited to see these programs continue to grow and thrive.

From all of us, “Jéréjëf!” – Thank You!

Planting Seeds for the Future

Volunteers from the community along with Andando staff after a very successful seed planting session.

Together with the help from members of the community, we have nearly realized our reforestation goal. Last year we started an ambitious goal of 50,000 trees that will be used as live fencing, shade trees, and for food production. Over 40,000 trees have been planted so far!

Over 40,000 trees have been started as part of our reforestation project.

Initially the seeds are planted in plastic sleeves that allow for proper watering and then they are grown under the cover of the greenhouse constructed on-site at our headquarters in Keur Soce.

Inside the greenhouse, Mandaw is holding one of the first trees we planted.

The greenhouse is covered with a special screen that protects the young plants from the scorching sun as well as from birds that would eat the seedlings before they could get established.

Trees inside the greenhouse are thriving (some are almost touching the ceiling) and are ready to be transplanted.

With the coming of the rainy season we have been able to start some trees directly in the ground, rather than having to start them as seeds, then later transplant them.

The Mayor of Keur Soce joined us for a ceremonial tree planting in honor of Senegal’s Arbor Day.

Recently, we celebrated Senegal’s Arbor Day with the blessing of the Mayor of Keur Soce and the Deputy Mayor who joined us in the ceremonial planting of two trees. In the environmental field trees symbolically are sources of vitality and sustainable development. The Mayor thanked Andando for our development actions within his community, especially the honor that he is granted through the planting of trees and watering them because “together these two elements are the source of life.”

The Mayor of Keur Soce along with his Deputy and the Andando staff ceremonially planting a tree in honor of Senegal’s Arbor Day.

We are grateful to have the support and collaboration with local authorities which enables our sustainable work. Your support allows our team in Senegal to continue to nurture these relationships and invest in the future of the communities we serve.

Forests for a Future

At a workshop led by Trees for the Future, our Lead Garden Technician, Mandaw, shares a sample garden plan incorporating trees. Trees serve as both a live fencing as well as produce food.

We have begun an ambitious and vital new Forest Garden project! Our initial goal is to reforest 50 acres in the Keur Soce region, with more in years to come. Trees not only provide a sustainable food source but also help with deforestation and soil erosion.

Last August, in a partnership with Trees for the Future, several of our Garden Technicians attended a tree planting and forest garden planning workshop. Our lead technicians expanded their knowledge and participated in practical, hands-on training to learn how to incorporate forest gardens into our existing vegetable gardens.

Recently we met with the local Department of Water & Forests and toured their tree nursery facility, gaining valuable insight into the specific needs in the region we work in most. By collaborating we gain buy-in from local leadership as well as the ability to pool our resources to maximize our impact.

This summer we constructed a tree nursery at our training facility in Keur Soce that will serve as the home base for the tree planting project. Our staff of Garden Technicians and Interns will propagate 50,000 seedlings that will be cared for at this nursery until they are strong enough to be replanted in community gardens, schools, and health posts.

Garden members learning how to transplant and care for young trees.

In the meantime, members of Andando’s garden cooperatives are participating in workshops where they are learning how to properly transplant and care for the seedlings once they are ready to be moved to their new homes. These women will serve as leaders and educators in their communities by demonstrating the benefits of Forest Gardens and their successful implementation.

This new project requires the addition of a Tree Technician to our staff in Senegal, who will serve as an invaluable resource for the individuals working with us and the communities benefiting from the Forest Gardens.