Farming
The work of The Red Rubber Ball Foundation all started here in 2010. We were offered a barren piece of land to help the villagers near Mundeku and Butere in Western Kenya to provide a regular meal to a group of local orphan children. We hoped that this would allow the children to concentrate on their studies so they can work towards a better future that they wouldn’t otherwise have.
Escaping the poverty trap
Village life for many in Kenya is hard. In rural areas, most families have a small plot of land where they grow maize and green vegetables. This produces their staple diet of Ugali, a maize flour made into a dough which is eaten with greens such as kale. These are grown primarily to feed the family, with any excess sold at the local market.
But with many producing the same crops, the price of maize and greens is low, meaning that villagers have little left for life’s luxuries. And as all secondary schools charge fees, education has become a ‘luxury’ that many simply can’t afford.
And in the slums where others have flocked seeking higher income in the cities, there is little regular or secure income. People are resigned to hustling on the streets for whatever work or income they can get each day. This could be a day’s work on a building site, or selling whatever they can find. For the women this could be domestic housework or preparing food on the streets.
For young girls this puts them at great risk to predatory men, often young men offering food, a ride to school or small personal effects. Or it could be older men choosing to take another wife, leaving behind a single mother to bring up the children. It was shown during COVID, when the number of teenage pregnancies in Kenya rose to unimagined levels as girls spent significant time out of school.
(Check out the BBC report: True cost of our tea)
A meaningful income
Our challenge developed from not just providing aid so children could eat today, to finding a model that was sustainable, and where local villagers could learn how to farm their plots in a way that would generate a meaningful income. That way they could care for their families, afford to pay school fees themselves, and external scholarships would no longer be needed.
Work formally began in February 2011, clearing the weeds, erecting a fence, digging a borehole, repairing a broken down hut, and planting crops including sugar cane, avocado and casava. Over time we added a house, a cow shed, and even a shower and outside toilet.
We were able to provide maize to two nearby primary schools and give employment to local villagers, while the bore hole provided the local villagers with access to clean, safe water each day, reducing the distance they needed to walk for water.
We added fruit trees like bananas and pawpaw and planted 400 pine and grevillea trees for timber.
Plants and seeds were given to villagers to help them make more from their own small-holdings and fruit and vegetables occasionally given during times of extreme hardship.
But the income produced remained low. Despite our investment, we could not make this 2-acre plot self-sufficient. It showed just how difficult it is for local families to survive on the small plots of land that they farm.
It posed the question – how can villagers create a meaningful income? The answer lies in education, but rather than scholarships for children to attend school, it’s the villagers who need to learn to farm more commercially. This means focusing on higher-value products like specialised dairy, poultry, fish and beekeeping which can produced economically on small 1-acre plots.
Farmer education
In September 2021, RRBF began a training programme of tuition for two groups of villagers, provided by agricultural advisors from the UN Farmer Field Schools initiative.
The Mundeku Farmers Group comprising 15-20 people met regularly every two weeks over the year to receive guidance from their agricultural advisor. They registered as a Self-Help Group, appointed a leadership team, and opened a bank account to administer funds.
Our funding allowed them to buy four bee hives and restore two disused fish ponds close to the village. The group built a shelter to protect the hives and planted flowers to attract bees. They also introduced 400 catfish and 200 tilapia fingerlings into the ponds and took turns to feed the fish and maintain the ponds.
In early December 2022, the first honey was extracted demonstrating that honey can be harvested on these small plots with minimal investment and produce an income.
We are waiting for the first harvest of fish.
The income generated is firstly to be used to repay loans from RRBF for operating costs. Remaining profits are shared between the group members showing how profitable bee-keeping and fish farming can be.
The Butere Farmers Self-Help Group proved to be less successful. Fifteen local villagers signed up and training began. The Foundation invested in materials to build a hen house. Unfortunately the materials received did not correspond to the receipts provided by the Farmer Field Schools advisor and despite efforts to hold him to account the missing materials were not forthcoming.
It is vital that everyone involved in projects is accountable and delivers on their part of the agreement.
Training was put on hold until the Farmer Field Schools completed the build but this did not happen, so training remains suspended.
On 30th June 2022, The Red Rubber Ball Foundation formally handed the land at Butere back to the land-owners. It was returned as a more viable economic unit that can continue to benefit the local community.
Seedballs
During 2022, we secured funding from Rotary District 1260 for an agro-forestry project which means we have been able to provide 40,000 seedballs to farmers groups, schools and Rotary Clubs in western Kenya. These seeds are indigenous varieties, including Sesbania, which is edible for dairy cows, and Dombeya which will support beekeeping, plus traditional Acacia.
Agroforestry is a land use strategy that combines food security whilst mitigating climate change, and provides other benefits to the ecosystem like limiting the impact on water usage and improving biodiversity. These seedballs enhance our villager education to establish how agroforestry compares to alternative land uses and what trees species work best in local conditions.
Over the next year we will monitor how many of these seedballs germinate and develop into fully grown trees and bushes.
You can make a difference
Your support will help us to do even more and to help villagers find other sources of income.