Rainbow Ridge

As well as being home for our CA Kids, Rainbow Ridge is also a sustainable village. Through our Development Aid Project we use Rainbow Ridge as a demonstration and teaching site for sustainability practices within the local community of Maili Sita. We believe that by teaching the local community how to provide for itself, it will then be better able to care for others, particularly local orphans.

A significant part of our Development Aid Project centers on permaculture, which is very much suited to any community that wants to maximise the uses of and output from its natural resources. Permaculture is about integrating the natural ecological processes of plants, animals, water, weather and nutrient cycles with human needs to produce sustainable systems for food and energy production, shelter and infrastructure.

Techniques

In addition to teaching theory and practice of permaculture, students will learn to replicate sustainable domestic support systems operating at Rainbow Ridge including compost toilets, solar power (lights, energy, compost fans), methane gas (cooking), grey water filtration systems and solar operated water pumps.

Of course, integral to our education is animal husbandry and teaching how to build and operate appropriate pens for pigs (breeding/selling), cows, chickens and goats including free -roam areas. We even have a small fish breeding operation.

our first job in transforming our site was transforming the land by creating swales (trenches) on contour to harvest water effectively.

Previously, about 86 per cent of water ran off the landscape. The annual maize crop was successfully grown despite drought-like conditions in this wet season period. Researching, sourcing and planting 2200 trees on site.

Developing vegetable gardens to capture rainwater and ensure year-round fresh and nutritious food. Sourcing a range of open pollinated vegetable and green manure seed to secure seed supply lines and to achieve better genetic diversity in the food supply.

We hold regular permaculture design courses and “permaculture in practice" courses for local and international students run by Greg Knibbs, Frank Kimaro and our Green Team.