Hi, my name is Michael Nichols of Seven Ravens on Salt Spring Island.
Our organization has been involved in permaculture projects and reforestation throughout the world over the last 20 years.
In Canada, South Africa, Kenya, Mexico, Guatemala, Spain, Australia and China.
My involvement in Kenya began over 22 years ago and as I traveled extensively throughout the country, I was struck by the vast extent of deforestation and its devastating effects.
I was inspired to do what I could to help restore natural diversity, so over the past two decades, I've established over 40 tree nurseries in various parts of Kenya.
To date, we at Seven Ravens have been involved in the planting of over 7 million trees throughout the country.
In British Columbia, there happened to be a rotor club on a Salt Spring Island rotor club and in this rotor club, they happened to have known Michael here. Michael has been in Kenya for 12 years, dealing with deforestation.
Basically, for the first six or seven years, I was involved very much going around the country just to see what Kenya was all about.
So I traveled to the coast and around Nairobi and to the Loyta Hills and to the Masai Mara and up north.
Just every place that I went to, I decided that I was going to establish a tree nursery with a school or a women's group or with some individuals.
During my early years in Kenya, most of the projects I initiated were self-funded.
As we have expanded our operations there, we have welcomed contributions from additional sources in order to further our efforts to support impoverished communities to attain self-reliance.
In 1998, I established a 20-acre demonstration farm at Red Shank near Nekuru, which has since become a flourishing example of a successfully integrated permaculture practice.
Permaculture farming is an integrated land and resource management system that takes local conditions into consideration in order to maximize the health and sustainable production of the land, while supplying the most diverse number of crops and empowering local economies.
We'd like to take you on a tour of our Seven Ravens project at Red Shank in Nekuru, central Kenya, to showcase the diversity of systems that we have successfully integrated into a fully developed permaculture farm ecosystem.
Here are just a few of the many examples of the systems which we have implemented to dramatically restore biodiversity within the area.
The first one is the Red Shank.
The second one is the Red Shank.
Over the past 10 years, Seven Ravens has expanded to include several partnerships within Canada and Kenya.
Together, we have established several community education gardens to help teach permaculture and to provide nutritious organic food to AIDS-affected orphans.
Donations from the Salt Spring Rotary Club and the Salt Spring Lions Club have helped us to develop a comprehensive permaculture farming model, which we have successfully implemented in several locations throughout Kenya.
In 2009, Seven Ravens teamed up with Kate Dewey, PhD professor at Guelph University and chair of the Department of Population Medicine to establish a school permaculture project for the children of Bukati organization.
Bukati Primary School in Butala, Western Kenya is now producing enough food to provide a healthy lunch for over 1,000 students each day.
This is a dramatic three-fold increase in the school's caring capacity from previously being able to support enrollment levels of under 350 students.
Considering that the majority of students are orphans, this meal is likely to be their only full meal of the day.
The abundance of additional food has been a benefit to the students' learning ability, as evidenced by the school's dramatic jump from 64th place to 1st place in the academic performance in the district since implementing the permaculture gardens.
The healthy lunches have also contributed to the school now being able to support a gymnastics team. The team won the provincial finals in their first year of competition.
Whilst establishing this project, we had the good fortune of cementing a strong working relationship with JB, our director of operations in the Butala district.
JB, a teacher of Bukati Primary School, was so taken by the potential of permaculture gardening that he has since successfully transformed his entire family farm into a shining example of maximizing usable space for food and resource production using permaculture principles.
In addition to his commitment to ensuring his school's success, JB was instrumental in establishing the Bolero School Permaculture Project, which we initiated in 2010.
The Seven Ravens team returned to Butala in November of 2010 to initiate a second project at Bolero Primary School.
Six acres of school property were converted from hard, compacted dirt into lush, productive gardens. These gardens are now supplying a large percentage of the lunches for the students each day, and while on the way to supplying all of the school lunches within the next year.
This year we will be returning to the same community to continue with a third school project at Bedouma Primary School.
The project site is strategically chosen to set up another permaculture center within the Butala district.
We have established a rolling three-phase system whereby each school becomes a resource base as it becomes developed, supplying seeds, seedlings, trees, knowledge and manpower for the next school project.
This model is proving to be very successful in helping the entire community to become aware of how permaculture can improve the quality of life and the economic health within their district.
Seven Ravens is working together with the University of Guelph in establishing a developing nations studies program.
After completing three months of directed in-class studies at the university, 15 students will accompany Seven Ravens to spend a month in Kenya, where they will learn to implement permaculture farming techniques at another primary school.
This practical on-site application segment of their course will give the university students the hands-on experience of working together with local community members, fine-tuning their ability to teach permaculture.
Seven Ravens welcomes the opportunity to partner with private sector organizations and individuals in order to expedite our expansion within the area.
We believe that the organizational structure of the private sector complements our own commitment to channeling funds quickly and directly towards implementing school permaculture projects, reducing administrative costs considerably.
Our team at Seven Ravens has been filming our three-phase permaculture farming model since 2009.
Our third year of filming in 2011 continues our commitment to documenting the transformative effects of reforestation in our implementation of permaculture gardens.
We are inspired to share our experience of witnessing the dramatic improvements that permaculture farming has had in the schools and in the lives of the children.
Thank you for sharing your time with us. We hope we have inspired you to support our cause.
So, this is really fantastic!
