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| Population: |
10,852,147 |
| Our Project: |
Building on a project initiated and nurtured by two Peace
Corps volunteers, TREES is training farmers throughout the Kaolack
Region in agroforestry, fruit tree production,
and vegetable production. After many years of working in the area, we opened an agroforestry training center in April 2007. |
| Situation: |
Confronting the Sahara desert, which lies 150 miles
to the north and is moving steadily to the south, the farmers of
Kaffrine face a rapidly growing environmental disaster. |
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| Click here or scroll to the bottom of the page to view pictures from our work in Senegal. |
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The Wolof people in the
Department of Kaffrine, live in the peanut basin of Senegal. They have punished
their soils with over a century of farming peanuts and millet, and
they are looking for new ideas to deal with irregular rainfall, locust
attacks, and the encroaching Sahara desert.
The few remaining baobab,
tamarind, and bush mangoes are all that remain of a once thriving
forest. Even native Acacia species are failing to naturally regenerate.
The last of the adult indigenous fruit trees are slowly dying. The
Senegalese government predicts that once plentiful trees such as Cordyla
africana, the bush mango, will soon be endangered. |
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| Access to running water
in many communities in recent years has allowed for dry season vegetable
production, which is becoming a primary source of income, but this
work continues to lack vital aspects of sustainable land use. |
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| Khady is
the head of her youth group |
This Prosopis living fence
and windbreak drops large
amounts of organic matter into this garden every year |
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| In response to the farmers
plight, TREES’ Technician John Leary, began training communities
in soil conservation techniques, agroforestry, forestry, fruit tree
propagation, and he helped establish four (4) agroforestry demonstration
sites. |
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| Families in Kaffrine are seeing our systems approach, and how it can revolutionize
the way they farm, collect firewood, manage their soil, feed
their animals, and sustainably expand their lucrative vegetable
production. John worked with these families for over three
years, coordinating trainings with Peace Corps Volunteers. He has been returning regularly to provide training and support. |
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John giving a training
on multipurpose windbreaks |
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| This project is an intensive
program delivering on-site training and planning to eighty (90) families
families in twenty (20) communities as they establish agroforestry
technologies in and around gardens and crop fields. This project emphasizes
a very strong training content and has planted over 750,000 trees.
We have been able to bring together the efforts of local NGOs, Peace
Corps, and the Senegalese Ministries of Agriculture and Forestry,
all of whom are currently using our training sites. |
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| Our Field Representative,
Omar Ndao, has played an integral role in this grassroots campaign
to institute sustainable land management, and he is well known in the surrounding area for his innovative techniques. His land lies at a major crossroads, and it is here that we have built a regional training center, which was opened in 2007. |
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| Those desiring copies
of training videos in Wolof should contact
us. |
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John and Babou |
Omar |
John
Leary, Omar Ndao, and Babou Ndao
Program Coordinators |
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The Grand Opening of the Trees for the Future Training Center |
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Villiage Planting Day |
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