Kageno’s Environmental program encompasses activities in sanitation, reforestation, and natural resource protection.
Natural Resource Protection
Kageno is establishing a large-scale ecological sanitation program within and around Banda Village and at the edge of Nyungwe Forest in Rwanda. This project will conserve groundwater and protect it from fecal contamination, and utilize human waste to increase agricultural yields without the assistance of destructive commercial fertilizer, much of which washes out of the soil and into water.
Eco-tourism Development
The overarching goal behind the Kageno eco-tourism project is to promote conservation efforts in and around Nyungwe Forest National Park through the development of ecotourism attractions with socio-economic elements that improve livelihoods of people living in the area. The project consists of four different, but interconnected components.
Reforestation
Rusinga Island is heavily deforested, having been stripped by a population unable to afford any other form of cooking fuel that firewood. In 2005 Kageno planted 50,000 trees as the leading organization in a reforestation project planned by the United Nations Development Programme. Since then, Kageno Kenya has actively donated seedlings and planting trees to curb erosion.
Sanitation – Briquette making
Trash pollution is a common problem in poor, over-populated communities. Kageno helps communities collect trash and convert it into trash briquettes that substitute for firewood and sold as a form of cooking fuel.
Eco-tourism Development
The overarching goal behind the Kageno eco-tourism project is to promote conservation efforts in and around Nyungwe Forest National Park through the development of ecotourism attractions with socio-economic elements that improve livelihoods of people living in the area. The project consists of four different, but interconnected components. For more information, click here.
Access to clean water is a crucial step in the community development process. Without it, communities depend on polluted surface water from nearby streams and become prone to waterborne diseases such as cholera, hepatitis, typhoid, and diarrhea. Otherwise healthy people who are constantly suffering from waterborne diseases are often unable to work, and children often must collect water instead of attending school. These factors lower productivity and strengthen cycles of poverty.
Since 2004, Kageno has helped relieve thousands of local people from sickness caused by drinking untreated, parasite-ridden water. Kageno’s drinking water project on Rusinga Island in Kenya provides safe drinking water to all local people. The project is driven by a solar-powered pump system, making it cost-effective and sustainable.
A similar project has been implemented in Banda Village (Rwanda) and now serves more that 2000 individuals daily. Banda Village rests on the edge of Nyungwe Forest, which is a clean water catchment for nearly 75% of Rwanda. Despite this, the people of Banda have been without access to clean drinking water due to the fact that there is not a single water pump in the entire village.