2022–23 Report: Andando

2023 Donation: $30,000

Our donation helped Andando dramatically increase the food security of rural Senegalese farmers by adding 675 families to their women’s cooperative gardening program, germinating over 15,000 beneficial tree seedlings, constructing a Tree Nursery and Agroforestry Center in Podor (including sinking a borehole to provide water security to the facility), and teaching climate-smart agriculture practices that offset the deforestation and loss of soil fertility due to hundreds of years of destructive colonial agricultural practices.

Like other partners in our program, Andando focuses on climate-smart farming. They construct women’s cooperative gardens, use solar pumps for water generation, partner with local farmers to incorporate native trees into field crop production, and reforest land using the forest garden permaculture method (intentionally placing plants to mimic the natural environment).

In the last two years, Andando’s 33 women’s gardens have yielded over 1.5 million pounds of organic produce and generated a profit of over $400,000 for more than 3,500 women — without any pesticides, herbicides, or synthetic fertilizers. They have reduced their water consumption, created fertile topsoil, and created natural barriers (like thorny fences and windbreaks) that both protect the land and sequester carbon. Going forward, Andando will expand to more communities in rural Senegal adding 400 families to their program, operate two native tree nurseries in the Kaolack and Podor regions of Senegal, and start the process of reforesting 100,000 trees.