Trees for Cities has been working in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, since 2007. We’re working with residents in the Kibera slum, planting 10,000 trees, raising environmental awareness and providing training. And we’re working to empower local people, especially women and young people, to protect the environment.

Nairobi is east Africa's most populous city, having grown from 10,000 inhabitants at the beginning of the last century to an estimated 3 million today. The population continues to grow at around 7% per year - placing great stress on the local environment.

In the deprived Nairobi slum of Kibera, nine in 10 residents live below the dollar-a-day poverty line. Residents there face low educational attainment, high levels of unemployment, and severe health challenges. Kibera, once a forest, suffers from an absence of biodiversity and tree cover. This further compounds the vulnerability of residents by restricting access to trees and their medical or food benefits. Yet a single apple tree can produce over 100kg of fruit each year to provide a source income for schools and food for pupils. But schools in the slum are under-resourced and buying good quality fruit trees is often beyond their means.

So, we’re expanding our work in Kibera, planting 10,000 trees with the help of residents and harder-to-reach communities with no access to basic services. We support tree planting, environmental awareness and training from our base at the Raila Educational Centre, as well as establishing tree nurseries and vegetable plots in schools for the community.

We also work with the The Green Belt Movement, founded by Wangari Maathai, to empower local communities, particularly women and young girls, to protect the environment. In 2004 Wangari Maathai became the first African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. In three years we planted over 3,800 trees in partnership with GBM. To celebrate the life of Wangari Maathai, who died in 2011, we helped Kibera Community Youth Programme and Voice of Kibera to plant new 500 indigenous fruit and medicine trees in two schools. Children learnt about tree planting and maintenance, as well as wider environmental issues. A tree inheritance scheme was also set up, giving students ownership of a specific tree.

The Nairobi project is supported by Bloomberg.

Trees for Cities relies on donations from individuals to deliver projects like the one in Kibera. You can support our project work by making a donation. You can also support by buying a community gift.

You can support our work in Nairobi by buying a community gift. Or if you’d like to know more about the projects, please contact Millie Brown at millie@treesforcities.org or call 020 7820 4427.