Hi Nabitende Neighbours,
Its really great joining this village simply because of the Project itself. Am really inspired! I am working with Sustainable Livelihoods International Uganda, and part of our initiatives is to promote sustainable livelihoods practices that promote food security, alleviate poverty without comprimising the environment on which community people depend. Therefore this project is in line. I there join the village having designed one such projects.

Noting that I have been in this village, sure the rate of forest and tree destruction in the whole district is at crisis levels.
Fruit Tree growing and planting trees is a welcome guesture. Note that such a project should consider integrating agroforestry practices including developing tree lots and woodlots both in the community and at household levels.
Please visit our website at www.slint.org for news and resources on such initiatives. I will go straight to developing the business plan.

Kind regards,
Marsha Denis Kabuuka

Dear friends,

After Sinead and Ken, we now have one more great neighbour joining the project!! I warmly welcome Mr Marsha Denis Kabuka to our group and I can already see the magic of nabuur taking place, Uganda, Ireland, the USA and Belgium connected for the best!

Please check my next email for the steps ahaed,

Warm Regards to all,

Derek

Dear Neighbours,

This is a crucial time for our project, and I really want to include you all in creating a vision for our project. After this we'll move on to a concrete action plan with defined tasks and we can all get to work :-).

In the beginning I had this very naive idea:

Let's grow a lot of fruit trees, make jams, export them through fair trade distribution channels and reinvest the money into more crops and eventually other projects such as Schooling, Hospitals etc.

But thanks to Paddy, Pim, Ken and Denis as well as other things that I read, I realized that the problem was actually much more complex, and that we need to address the issues in a complex manner.

Before we think about cash crops, I think we need to address two issues first:

1. The environment is being destroyed because trees are cut to make firewood and to create a small revenue for villagers.

2. The village is deep into poverty and has no crops to ensure a healthy life.

These two issues should in my opinion be resolved in the first place, before we address the next step, which is increasing revenue for the villagers.

This is my suggestion:

Ken and Denis, you are our two experts! This is my question to you, in order to address issue number 2:

Where should we start, and what should we grow in order to alleviate poverty and hunger in the most effective way. I know Ken you have suggested growing vegetables, maybe this would be indeed a good first step, especially since I know you have succeeded with very action oriented plans in other villages.

Sinead and I, could try to find the funds to purchase solar ovens as soon as possible, and so villagers don't have to cut wood for firewood anymore.

I really hope to read your reactions to this message and that together we can come up with a strong action plan.

Paddy I hope you can give us your feedback on this as well!

Warm Regards to all...

Derek

Dear Derek,

Thank you. I truelly agree with you that the first step should be identifying initiatives to help the local people alleviate poverty.
I truelly suggest, that the community should first of all be allowed to grow quick maturing plants such as cabbages, egg plants, maize, including soya beans that take less than 4 months to mature and sale even be a source of food security. However, the idea of fruit growing should be an integrative aspect. For example: a garden of cabbages or egg plants should hold quick maturing mango tree fruits that could take 15 months to produce fruit; Woodlot trees be planted e.t.c.

I have started the process of the business plan, giving the background context! But we shall need to integrate the aspect of vegetable growing.

The idea of solar ovens is a long term initiative that should not be rushed into. At this time mobilising funds for purchasing or acquiring high value seedlings and plantings (vegetables and fruit trees) sounds best. A person will not cut down a quick maturing mango tree for firewood if properly sensitised and trained!

Kind regards
Marsha Denis

I will provide a tentantive objective and vision of the project tomorrow.

I also sugget we change the title of the project to: Nabitende Integrated Fruit Growing and Agroforestry Project.
Or
Nabitende Sustainable Fruit Tree Growing and Community Agroforestry Project.

Neighbours, what do you think?

Marsha Denis

Dear Derek and Nabitende,

I have made some progress in developing the project plan as you will see in the Business plan. As you will see, I have tried to integrate fruit and vegetable growing(pineaples, passion fruit, carrots, cabbages etc) into the plan.

As per my contribution yesterday, I proposed that the Naming of the Project be changed. This is in line with the need to integrate fruit growing with agroforestry practices and other agricultural crop growing/ animal farming activities.

I propose the long-term goal of the project: is to contribute to the eradication of poverty, food insecurity and fostering a lasting high quality of life for the local people in Nabitende parish while safeguarding long-term environmental sustainability by growing fruits(including fruit and multi-purpose trees) and promoting agroforestry systems.Its mission is: “planting fruit trees for healthier populations and better environment”.

Neighbours what do you suggest? Note that I have not yet indicated this in the Plan.

Kind regards,
Marsha Denis.

Dear Neighbours,

I thank you all for your contribution, especially Marsha Denis, who has blessed us with his expertise and strong input. I think this will be a great learning experience for all of us!!

I agree with changing the project name, goal and issue:

Nabitende Sustainable IntegratedFruit Tree Growing and Community Agroforestry Project.

...is my favourite. Let's wait for everybody's opinion and then I will make appropriate changes.

Have a great day!

Derek

Dear Derek,

Thank you for that positive response. We shall need to further edit the posted contribution to the plan. You will notice that the first part of the concept is mainly on fruit tree and tree planting yet the last part of the concept is integrating vegetable growing and fruit tree growing aspects.

However, lets move steadily.
Thanks again,

Marsha Denis Kabuuka

Hi Marsha Denis,

Here are some questions and comments about your input in the project plan.

1. What exactly is a tree nursery?
2. You talk about 3 community groups, what is the goal of those 3 groups?
3. Should we give our group a name? Maybe this would allow a possible future expansion into the format of an NGO for nabitende sutainable development.
4. Seeds. Where can we find these and what are their cost.

Thanks again, hopefully we'll get some input from the other neighbours!

Cheers to all,

Derek

Hello everyone,

My sugegstion baed on Marsha Denis's project plan input is to make a list of crops and choices available to villagers and ask them their input.

Could we make such a list or I'll try to find one, with the good and bad points of each crop, and different possible combinations.

Thanks

Derek

Hey Marsha Denis,

Thank you for the leadership you've taken in this project, please feel free to ask the neighbours for help or tell us what you think we can help you with, although you definitly have more expertise than we do. Hopefully Ken will join in regarding vegetables.

CHeers

derek

I am happy to help with vegetable growing. As a start, I suggest you do the following:

Build a Demonstration Bed in the village.

Healthy soil produces healthy plants, with high yields, to have healthy people and prevents most disease, pest, weed and erosion problems.

This bed will demonstrate to people that this really works.
1. Mark off a bed 2 meters wide and 5 meters long. Can be any width or length.
2. Do not dig or till the bed. Cut down any weeds, etc and leave on top of the soil.
3. Plant a green manure/cover crop [seed are available in every country] in the bed. Irrigate using a drip line[s] if it is the dry season. I will tell you how to make the dripline out of poly tubing and a plastic pail.
4. Let the gm/cc grow until time to plant a food crop. Cut the gm/cc down level with the soil, so it dies, and leave it on top of the soil.
5. Open up rows [4?] in which to plant a crop [maize?] or clear small areas [6 inches round] to plant agusi or squash, etc.
6. Harvest. Leave plants on top of the soil.
7. Do not dig or till.

Another way is to plant maize and when it is 300 to 400 cm tall, plant Mucuna [or other gm/cc] between the maize plants. When the maize is harvested, leave the stalks standing. The Mucuna will grow and climb up the maize stalks and cover the ground. When it is time to plant the next crop, cut the Mucuna off at the ground and leave on the soil. Plant the next crop in the Mucuna.

This demonstration bed will prove to everybody that this works. No hoeing, no digging, no tilling!

I will help every step of the way. All you have to do is email me. Send me a postal address and I will mail you a DVD [English & French] on no-till. After you have the bed built and growing a gm/cc crop, I will mail to you seeds for new food crops.

On land that is sloping, it is much more involved. I have visited a farm in Honduras on land with a 73º slope. That is steep. No erosion. Beds were six years old.

Ken

Hi Derek and Neighbours

Well Derek, in the draft proposal/plan the tree nursary is a bed of tree seeds as Ken as described in point 1 below; where the seeds are raised and then distributed to local people to plant. Note that such a nursary will be needed to act as a demonstration and extension support to the local community. We shall not be able to provide the community with fruit tree seeds for them to raise at an early stage of the project . Otherwise it could be disaster! So we need at least three community nursary beds.

The project could mobilise local people into 3 or 2 groups depending on the need. Paddy mentioned that there are over 200 people that could get involved in the project. This is a large number to get to and assist. It is easier reaching out to such a large number of people when they are organised in groups say women, youth e.t.c. Note that each of the local people in Nabitende might have a priority/need as far as the project is concerned. Therefore organising them in groups according to needs/priorities sounds better. At the end of the day, we shall have a community association under which the groups of people will be organised.

As I suggested, the group will have a name at some stage. I will include that in the proposal. For now, I suggested a name of the project, of which you have participated as we wait for other Neighbours input. Beneficiaries capacity will need to be built for them to form into a formal community association at an advanced stage of the project. For now lets get rolling with the much needed support to the village. When the local people see the benefits, they won't hestate forming that NGO.

We need to find which crops local people will need to grow. Paddy and I will have to organise and carry out a basic needs assessment on this. We should not decide for the local people. We need their input as far as this is concerned. Of course we also need to sensitise them on why they will also need to grow e.g fruit trees such as mangoes and woodlots/treelots. Why they need to grow pineapples, cabbages along side other crops they desire etc. The seeds are available locally here in Uganda and we shall have to find out the costs.

As we develop the project we need to start actual mobilisation of the local people as far as the project is concerned.

I thank Ken, for his demonstration below. We shall definately follow such practices.

Ken/Derek, we shall in future need an illustrative video on fruit tree or tree growing practices for outreach purposes in Nabitende.

Derek, hope I have tried answering some of the rised questions.

Kind regards,
Marsha Denis.

Dear Neighbours,

I am sooo happy to see how we`ve made amazing progress in the last days... We`ve been blessed by Marsha Denis joining our team and taking great leadership in drafting our project plan. Let`s keep a sharp eye on all input he`s making.

Ken, thank you very much for your input, I sent Paddy a message to ask him to send you his address for the dvd.

Thank you Marsha Denis for answering my quesitions, I will now make our title change.

Thank you all for your strong support and collaboration,

Derek

Dear Neighbours,

Sure, I agree with Derek and thank him for this committedness and facilitation.

I truelly believe we need to move fast to alleviate suffering, poverty and environmental demage. We should always think about the Millenium Development Goals, including alleviating poverty so that local people in Nabitende upgrade themselves from living in mud grass thatched houses to Iron sheet roofed houses!
The only major resource local people in the village have is land. Let us use this as a tool to alleviate poverty and ignorance.

Kind regards,
Marsha Denis Kabuuka