At the moment we are still in the stages of fundraising for the infrastructure of Sadhana Forest Kenya.
Sharing Knowledge
Sadhana Forest Kenya’s training center will be a place to share knowledge with volunteers and people of the surrounding Samburu community. We will give trainings and courses covering many aspects such as: Permaculture, reforestation, tree planting, tree care, seed saving, soil erosion control, water conservation, nutrition, cooking courses, and more. All of the training and courses will be given free of charge.
To read more on why we don’t charge for activities such as these go here: “Gift Economy”.
Training in Samburu & Swahili Language
We feel that it is very important to offer the local community training in their language (Samburu and Kiswahili). This allows all to enjoy the benefits of our trainings, regardless of their knowledge of English. Language should not be a barrier in acquiring such information.
Sadhana Forest Kenya would also like to acquire local knowledge from the Samburu people. The Samburu pastoralists are one of the few populations in Kenya that have retained their knowledge of local plant usage. This knowledge is quickly being lost due to rapid westernization of their culture, overgrazing, and overexploitation of plant resources*. Sadhana Forest realizes the importance of local knowledge and learning from the people we work with in different communities. Sadhana Forest Kenya hopes to serve as a space to share knowledge among diverse communities and people.
* Ethnopharmacological survey of Samburu district, Kenya
Polyculture
Biodiversity is essential for any healthy ecosystem; monocultures are very vulnerable to disease and pests. When we expand this understanding of the natural world to human culture we observe that in many parts of the world indigenous knowledge is increasingly forgotten and lost forever. This loss of diversity is the degeneration towards a cultural monoculture.
Sadhana Forest believes that there are many elements of indigenous knowledge that should be documented and preserved. We would like our training center to be a space to share such knowledge that is slowly being forgotten. Another important element that Sadhana Forest aspires for is empowering local communities to feel that aspects of their culture are valuable and should not be forgotten.
