THE DESTINY OF THE LUHYIA COMMUNITY
The Biochar, Solar Cooker Stove and Agroforestry Farming Project
The Destiny of the Luhyia Community is grateful to get funds from APE UK to implement The Biochar, Solar Cooker Stove and Agroforestry Farming Project in Lake Victoria region of Budalangi District in western Kenya, with the goal to eradicate hunger, deforestation, and energy insecurity and tackle climate change, by connecting markets and the cooperative efforts of our farmers. We want to work with the poorest of the poor who are women and youth in this region who earn less than $1 per week.
By training these rural communities, we will empower them to manage their natural resources, to overcome the conditions that keep them in abject poverty and to mitigate climate change in their region. This project will turn current land use practices into activities that offer great benefits to these communities whilst saving forests and tackling climate change. All we need to succeed is a starting point and a small investment.
The first component is to train women and youth in biochar farming (basic education in integrated soil management). They will be taught new techniques on how to produce biochar and how to apply it to soils. When optimally managed, biochar reduces fertilizer requirements. They will be trained how to use the BEK pyrolyzer to turn their agricultural waste (corn cobs, bean stalks, sugar cane stalks, etc.) into charcoal, which they can then make into briquettes for fuel, as well as use as a soil additive to increase soil fertility on their respective farming plots.
The second component is to train youth and women in clean solar cooker stoves and agroforestry. The focus in this component is on up scaling the use of renewable energy through support for solar, (fireless) cooker technology and wood fuel energy saving technologies like rocket stoves, as well as agro-forestry for sustainable fuel wood energy sources. The main strategies to realize this include the popularization of energy saving technologies such as energy saving stoves and fireless cooker baskets etc., as a way of introducing efficiency in the use of the existing but scarce fuel wood resources, whilst curbing massive CO2 emissions via old modes of cooking. This will be done via support to women and youth groups using demonstrations, capacity building, promotion of solar cooker stoves projects, the establishment and expansion of woodlots, agro-forestry farms and green belts with multi-purpose trees that help boost the fuel wood resource as well as to act as carbon sink to mitigate on climatic change effect.
“We are thrilled to get funding from you; this fund will accomplish advanced training, networking to our young entrepreneurs in… Biochar, Solar Cooker and Agro-Forestry Projects and also for the first time, this region has entered a bold new phase of growth and opportunity and the investment in these youth and their social change innovations will reap returns far into the future.”
