Malawi - planting trees against hunger

Malawi in Africa is experiencing an acute food shortage, and worsening climatic conditions. We are Zikomo Project, a team of Malawians and Germans, battling poverty, hunger and bad health.

The group is led by John Chimphamba in Malawi, a clinical officer (picture below), and his long-time friend, PD Dr. Norbert Heinrich, a medical doctor and university TB researcher, in Germany (picture above).

In 3 years, we have planted 120.000 trees to combat climate change, and drilled 4 boreholes for safe drinking water for local communities. You can find them on Google maps by searching for "Zikomo tree planting" and "Zikomo borehole".

Now, Malawi is on the brink of famine due to fertilizer shortage (secondary to Russian war in Ukraine and sanctions), and bad weather.

A woman, single mother of seven, told us in September: "When we had fertilizer, we harvested maize and ate three times a day. Now, I can give my children food only once a day, and they cannot go to school because I cannot buy pens and exercise books".

Here' s the plan: we want to plant more trees in Jan and Feb 2023 as a "food for work" progamme. Preparing the ground is hard manual labor for the communities, and we will buy maize in bulk and distribute this to the families involved (below: maize distributed in early 2022 after planting).

Your donations will be used to buy tree seedlings and maize while also supporting the salaries of Julius and Malek, our agricultural workers who coordinate these efforts. Please help!

More details on our work: www.kapiri.de (currently German only)