Welcome to the fifth week of our 12 Weeks of Christmas stories. If you want to make a difference to people’s lives in Malawi, why don’t you buy a Christmas gift from our Christmas Gift Catalogue.
A gift of £25 could help a family plant 25 fruit trees in Malawi
John and Dorothy Nkhwazi and their three children live by the lake where the soil is poor and trees are scarce. We’ve help them grow their own trees that they planted out this rainy season. They include trees that they can coppice for wood to use on their fuel-efficient cookstove and fruit trees that help improve their children’s diet. These are planted around their boundary perimeter.
As any of you who have been to Malawi will know, deforestation is a huge problem there. That is why we continue to grow trees and provide seeds for local communities. This year we are setting up 15 new community tree planting clubs, who will each grow thousands of tree seedlings to be planted out. They will grow a combination of Cassia trees, to provide wood for cooking fuel, indigenous hardwoods and fruit trees. Orange, tangerine, lemon, mango, guava and avocado will help improve people’s diets and any surplus can be sold.
We continue to provide 10,000 households in Nkhata Bay District with 35 seeds and plastic pots (or tubes they are known locally) in areas that are particularly badly affected by deforestation. The householders are then responsible for growing and caring for the seedlings themselves, thus getting them to take ownership of their trees. 25 Cassia seeds, 5 guava and 5 papaya seeds are provided to each household.
Mwaya tree nursery continues to flourish, with the fruit orchard producing its first fruit this year. And many more thousands of seedlings are being grown once again for local primary schools to get the students involved with tree planting and tree tending. This helps them learn about their environment, deforestation and gets them to take ownership of the trees. So it’s an educational tool that also helps provide more trees.
We have planted 4 million trees since we started tree planting, so please help us keep this really important initiative going to combat deforestation and educate future generations about the importance of how to look after their environment. Your gift will help us provide much needed trees to more householders in the area.
On behalf of the Nkhwazi family and other families in Malawi, we’d like to say Thank You for taking the time to read about one of our environmental projects.
Tawonga Ukongwa!
