Introduction to Adopt a Site Program

Adopt a Site is a restoration project model that facilitates clients both from the public and private sectors to invest in increasing forest cover and promoting descent work. The Adopt a site Restoration Project works in landscape restoring and rehabilitation of degraded land both to Marine and terrestrial.

What markets are you in?

• Farmer groups: These are groups that have been allocated specific sites to develop seedlings and help during planting of mangroves.
• Corporates: There are quite a number of corporate players who we serve including banking institutions, government parastatals and private companies among others.
• NGOs: Local/ national and international NGOs are involved and are still called upon to get involved in various aspects of the operations including financing, purchasing of trees, physical planting among other levels.

The Innovation 

The community based Ecological Mangrove Restoration has gone through different levels of growth in its five years strategic plan FY 2016 – 2020 implementation, and with the cumulative impact and lessons learnt, Adopt a Site has shown transformative change.

What’s different/interesting about Big Ship – Adopt a Site Restoration?

Besides development of terrestrial and marine tree seedlings and planting, Adopt a Site Restoration engages in alternative programs that support conservation and provide livelihoods to the communities.

How partners pay for the project

• Seedlings establishment. One of the approaches is we encourage the community to pot seedlings, which we later buy from them and use them for restoration projects.
• Apiaries and honey business. We encourage stakeholders to buy hive kits for installation in the mangrove forest. Mangrove honey is of high quality and on demand in the market. These are community owned and fetch an income for the community. Big Ship buys raw honey from the farmer, brands it and resell to external markets. 20 hives have now been installed in different sites with over 100 bee keeper farmers empowered in this way.
• Crab farming. We encourage farmer groups to venture into crab fattening and cage farming as a source of income drawing from the mangrove ecosystem. These are sold to hotels and restaurants on a harvest or order basis.

Business Model

The project allows different customers to facilitate payment through different mechanisms depending with the type of service on offer. The project facilitates direct sales from the office and also through retail sales and mobilise money system targeting local and international clients. The project gets government grants through proposal development and offering consulting and training for institution and schools.

 

Work Done

As of 2020, 43 institutions have been involved with a total of 101,000 mangrove seedlings planted covering an area of 54 acres. These sites are also on active monitoring schedules to increase survival rates.

Increased mangrove restoration activities within the Tudor Creek with over 300,000 seedlings planted due to the existence of a seedlings bank. This also saw over 71 individual farmers involved in establishing seedlings.

Increased forest cover and increased community knowledge on the importance of conservation. Increased awareness on the benefits of the mangrove ecosystem in Mombasa.

Over 100,000 individuals reached out through various activities including trainings during mangrove planting, environment days among others.