Over 20 years of observations and direct community involvement means we have developed a strong understanding of the challenges and situations that rural villages face in Malawi. To tackle these problems, we have developed workshops and approaches which directly address these issues, offering realistic holistic approaches, which empower communities to solve them.
Sustainable Development Workshops
For years, Butterfly have been directly involved in communities, hosting workshops, women’s groups and and sharing information. Recently, a successful pilot program for the ‘E.A.R.T.H (Environment, Agroforestry, Regeneration, Topsoil, Health) Workshops’ were implemented in Pundu Village combining resources from the Information Centre Project and sessions from the Malawi Schools Permaculture Clubs. They have been specially designed with realistic approaches, to directly impact interested villages, to increase food and water security, improve nutrition and to empower communities to find solutions to environmental issues including deforestation and soil degradation.
Our experienced community development outreach team will deliver the workshops over 3 months, followed by ongoing support and visits.
- Workshop Introduction- ‘The Seeds Of Change’ Movie showing. The film raises awareness and encourages debates on critical social economic issues at community level, including gender based violence, child education, the effects of climate change, deforestation, women empowerment and youth unemployment. Discussions will encourage the community to participate fully in the following workshops, which will teach people how to solve some of these issues.
- Mbeya Fertilizer– A demonstration on how to make low-cost organic based fertilizer.
Soil Health & Mulching– A lesson and demonstration about how to build and improve soil structure and fertility. - Compost– A demonstration to make organic compost using free local materials which are found easily in villages.
- Fuel Reducing Cook Stoves– a demonstration to make fuel reducing cook stoves which use 1/3 of the firewood as a traditional stove.
- Health & Nutrition A workshop about nutrition & health followed by a cooking demonstration using healthy additions which can be easily grown at home.
- Agroforestry– discussion about deforestation, agroforestry and approaches, followed by an indigenous and fruit tree planting workshop.
A weekly follow up support program will run for 6 weeks to encourage and support villages to adopt and implement these approaches. Ongoing support visits will continue quarterly to monitor and encourage new engagement in the skills learned by the village.
Planting Trees
Deforestation in Malawi is a big issue. The impact is affecting Malawian citizens more and more each year, so we are working towards these issues by providing trees, and educating communities about why it is important to replant and care for them.
Our tree planting projects are divided into three different types of reforestation projects.
1. Educating children at schools through the Malawi Schools Permaculture Clubs program, providing and planting a mixture of fruit trees, indigenous trees and other useful trees at participating schools, with the children. The trees are cared for, and monitored by the children in the clubs.
2. Educating communities through a series of interactive and beneficial workshops which promote the benefits of village forests, and growing trees on private and public land. We will provide indigenous, fruit and timber trees, planting them with communities.
3. Planting trees on private land, promoting agroforestry approaches that benefits both smallholders and nature. The trees will include indigenous species along with cash crops and trees which can provide benefits for farmers and land owners in the future.
Monitoring Our Tree Planting...
- We will document and count all trees provided to communities, and visit areas which trees have been planted, year by year, to monitor survival rates.
- To protect the trees we plant, we will work with communities and implement workshops and awareness campaigns about the benefits of protecting trees, the dangers and bush fires and effects of deforestation.
- We will create new sustainable ways of income through sustainably grown cash crops, such as cacao, which benefit from the shade of trees.
- We will plant the trees in communities which we work together with and support through our community projects, including our nursery schools, disability centers, and participants in our Malawi School Permaculture program.
Support this Project and Plant Trees
This opportunity brings together the perfect partnerships:
– Individuals and companies that want to plant trees
– Individuals and groups that can plant trees
In cooperation with local communities and smallholders every single tree is planted and raised by hand.
Our tree planting projects follow a holistic approach, that give the community members and smallholders a new opportunity to generate an income.
Planting trees is a job and planting trees is necessary.
Therefore this job has to be paid for.
You want to get involved? Contact us now…
We provide a transparent and easy way to get involved in tree planting and CO2-reducing activities for you, or your company, providing opportunities to make a positive impact.
We find individual solutions for every type of business and help to find an integrative way of getting involved in climate and social projects. Just contact us.
We consult companies in finding the right strategy for their social and environmental projects.
Other Demonstrations
Butterfly offers a space to showcase alternative green demonstrations to our community, visitors and school groups. Butterfly Space Lodge uses eco-friendly compost toilets in our communal spaces and guest rooms. All the grey water from the site is used on the growing permaculture gardens. We have solar heated water, using both affordable local methods, and solar hot water units. We also use fuel reducing cook stoves (“Changu Changu Moto”) which were built for us by Ripple Africa, and plan to demonstrate building these stoves in villages in the coming year. We reuse and recycle as much of our trash as possible for tree & plant seedings. We also have a tree nursery situated at the lodge, compost production, and organic fertilizer production.
Butterfly has many permaculture plots around the site. The community, and visitors can see all of these practices by following our nature trail around the site, with labels on the different species of trees, and plants, and permaculture techniques. A map and questionnaire is available for local children to follow, when we have school visits from our Malawi School Permaculture Clubs program.
We would love to follow in the footsteps of William Kamkwamba, The Boy who Harnessed the Wind, and build ourselves a small wind turbine here at Butterfly to cover us for the occasions when the electricity is off. Using local materials and tradesmen found in any village, and again explaining the build in the information centre, would mean that others from the community would be able to copy.
Butterfly has a passion for environmental topics, and aims to demonstrate different techniques, and provide new ideas and information at the Community Information Centre at Butterfly. We provide ‘how to do’ hand outs for wood-reducing stoves, solar drying units, how to make compost, organic fertilizer, rainwater harvester, alternative building techniques, etc, which are free to the community to access. Josie Redmond’s (founder), gained many of these ideas at The Centre for Alternative Technology in Wales. Previously, engineers from Engineers without Borders at Sheffield University developed a bicycle powered water pump which was made from local materials and demonstrated to local farmers.
Volunteering Opportunities
For anyone with an environmental skill to teach, it is the perfect place to come and share it, whether here at Butterfly or at a local school or government building. Get involved in permaculture garden design’s, fundraise to build compost loo’s at schools, bicycle water pump’s, solar water heaters, greywater capture, rain water harvester and more, or bring your own environmental idea’s to share in the community!
