We are very excited to be partnering with the Drylands Natural Resources Center (DNRC) through the Moringa Partners Program. Over the course of the July 2014 campaign, 15% of proceeds made from sales through this page will support the DNRC’s work with Moringa oleifera in Kenya. The following video and interview with the DNRC provide excellent background on the organization and prove why they are worthy of your support!
Interview with Daniel Pike, Director of Planning for the DNRC
How did the DNRC come to be?
The DNRC is the brainchild of Nicholas Syano, an expert in natural resources management and nonprofit leadership, who was born and continues to live in Mbumbuni, a small rural town in the semi-arid district of Makueni in central Kenya.
Like most Mbumbuni families today, Nicholas’s family supported themselves by farming their own land, without electricity or running water. Nicholas loved farming but also excelled as a student, receiving a series of scholarships and eventually earning a MSc in Natural Resources Management at the University of Wisconsin. He then went on to manage significant nonprofit programs in Kenya, including at the Kenya Institute of Organic Farming and Nyambani Village in Nairobi.
Sadly, by the time he was thirty Nicholas had seen Mbumbuni lose most of its tree cover – as people felled trees for firewood and charcoal – and then suffer the soil erosion, ecosystem collapse, and falling crop yields that follow deforestation.
Nicholas felt he had the background, training and tools to help his community respond to the interconnected problems of deforestation, famine, and poverty that they faced.
And so, in 2006 Nicholas began the DNRC. He aimed to apply the most promising ideas and techniques in natural resources management, but also to help his friends, family, and neighbors co-produce their own solutions to economic, social, environmental problems.
Eight years later, the DNRC has refined its model and expanded beyond Mbumbuni to five other towns. By providing forestry training and saplings via long-term credit, we’re reversing the vicious cycles of deforestation, soil erosion, and farm collapse, and have enabled thousands of people to learn and share ideas, restore their land, and work towards economic security.
Why did you decide to get involved with the DNRC and where do you see the organization going in the next five years?
I met Nicholas in early 2007, when he had established a tree nursery and was beginning to raise funds. I was an undergraduate student at the University of Virginia, and had been studying economics and international development in textbooks without ever getting involved on-the-ground.
I wanted that on-the-ground experience, and thought Nicholas was a unique talent with enormous leadership potential, the gravitas to succeed, and a very important, noble mission.
I most admired Nicholas’s unwavering dedication to the rural families we serve. Rural areas are neglected in many countries; rural drylands in Kenya are completely marginalized. Many people with Nicholas’s academic credentials would have left Mbumbuni behind and not looked back. But Nicholas is committed to the community that raised him, and to generating effective interventions for all drylands communities.
When it came to his model of intervention, I liked how he prioritized from the start the needs and views of the families we serve, while taking a balanced, long-term view of how to restore land, preserve biodiversity, and generate economic value.
For eight years, we’ve been steadily expanding our capacity to grow trees and train farmers, while waiting patiently for the first generations of trees we’ve planted to mature. This year, those first trees will mature, and we will begin harvesting them, in a sustainable manner, for many products they provide. It’s an exciting stage where we’ll start to reap what we sow and return significant income to our farmers and to the DNRC!
Looking forward five years: Before 2020, I envision the DNRC serving 10,000 farmers per year and supporting itself entirely with revenue from tree harvesting, led ably by Nicholas Syano, who will by then have emerged as a national leader on drylands policy and practice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QmvK-6WYsY&feature=youtu.be
