Sustainable Village Resources of East Africa was one of the 20 finalists in the 2020 Permaculture Magazine Prize.

Additional updates are available in the March 2021 Permaculture Magazine article Goodbye Poverty: regenerative agriculture and livelihoods.

April 2021 Update

We are experiencing long rains and we are very busy training the marginalized Rural farmers, widows, and orphans and are busy planting. We are also very busy with coffee cherry-picking. Coffee is our biggest cash crop and our permaculture coffee is selling very well in the Nairobi coffee exchange.

The initial funding of $1,000 (USD) was used to train 25 windows. All the 25 widows went and set up their own kitchen Gardens and each widow has trained 4 neighbors and so far the Goodbye Poverty Project has reached 100 households plus the 25 original widows.

About mentoring, we have about 10 widows who are experienced in indigenous traditional clay pot making baskets and jewelry. They have trained 15 girls in indigenous traditional artistry. We have 30 girls learning kitchen gardening.

We are training the 25 widows in Forest Gardens.The good news is that the late husbands left the widows with large pieces of land which are underutilized. Our aim is to make these lands productive by using them for growing food crops and cash crops.

The widows are making a very good income from the community garden which is producing a lot of vegetables which they sell weekly and they borrow all the proceeds at 5 percent interest. We call the system village serving and credit.

With the initial funding of $1,000 (USD), we can prove that we lifted 25 widows from poverty. The short-term income comes from the kitchen Gardens and the long-term income comes from permaculture agroecology forest gardens mainly from coffee.

We will need to fundraise $5,000 (USD) to help us upscale 2 laptops and a very good camera.