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.” ”
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.