How do you work with communities and individual farmers to build trust and achieve multiple social, financial, and ecological goals? Executive Director Nelson Muiru of Kijabe Environment Volunteers (KENVO) talks with Jeff Ishee, Mary Sketch Bryant, and Eric Bendfeldt about how their organization seeks to maximize biodiversity, ecosystem services, and food security in the Central Highlands of Kenya in East Africa. Like many countries, Kenya is working to conserve and preserve non-renewable resources (i.e., soil, water, culturally significant forests, etc.) to benefit people's livelihoods and communities. KENVO provides leadership and education to conserve biodiversity in the Kikuyu Escarpment, while also preserving natural habitats, protecting water quality, and building soil health. For Nelson and his colleagues, this means working closely with local communities to identify mutually beneficial goals and advancing eco-friendly income-generating businesses (e.g., forest farming, beekeeping, water bottling, solar-dried foods) through trust, accountability, and ongoing conversations with farmers and communities.

To learn more about Kijabe Environment Volunteers' (KENVO) community-focused conservation work, please visit https://kenvo.org/

To join the Virginia Soil Health Coalition and pledge your support for soil health, please visit https://www.virginiasoilhealth.org/ and https://4thesoil/take-the-pledge

To nourish and (re)imagine collaboration, conservation, and community, plan to register and attend the upcoming 2023 Virginia Farm to Table Conference.

4 the Soil: A Conversation is made possible with funding support from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and The Agua Fund. Other partners include the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service; Virginia Cooperative Extension; Virginia State University; Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation; and partners of the Virginia Soil Health Coalition.

Disclaimer: Views expressed on this podcast are those of each individual guest.

To download a copy of this, or any other show, visit the website 4thesoil.org. Music used during today’s program is courtesy of the Flip Charts. All rights reserved. 4 the Soil: A Conversation is produced by On the Farm Radio in collaboration with Virginia Tech. The host and co-hosts are Jeff Ishee, Mary Sketch Bryant, and Eric Bendfeldt.