The Kusamala team is happy to welcome Gladson Chakwera and Issac Banda to our Permaculture Deomstration Centre! Both Gladson and Issac have joined us as a part of the JANEEMO project implementation.
Gladson joins us from Dowa, where he will be implementing our JANEEMO project as the Village Project Manager. He will be living and working at the Centre for six-months in order to develop a thorough understanding of our demonstration systems, focusing on agroforestry and the JANEEMO species (jatropha, neem, moringa). Gladson has already organized two groups of community members from the Mdela and Psyeda, in Dowa district, to attend trainings at the Demonstration Centre. Come October Gladson will be returning to Dowa to share his knowledge with communities there and assist them in attaining their goal of planting 12,000 JANEEMO trees in the 2012/13 rainy season.
Issac has begun his regular visits to the Centre as the JANEEMO Mtendere Co-operative Liaison. In his short time here he has already impressed all of the Centre staff with his extensive knowledge of tree care and management. In a recent lesson he even taught us how to graft a tree by wrapping manure around a living branch to sprout roots! In his role as Co-operative Liaison, Issac will be learning about our permaculture and vegetable production demonstrations and bringing those practices back to his community start a demonstration garden at the co-operative site. He is also building a tree nursery at the Centre and in the Mtendere community for JANEEMO and other tree species.
