A WORLD TO SUSTAIN
Growing Sustainable Livelihoods on the Front Lines of the Climate Crisis
Since 2017, RUWAI’s leadership team—including executive director Uche Isieke, staff and volunteers, and expert advisory council from around the world—has implemented scientific and indigenous knowledge on-the-ground to create genuine and lasting change.
With global membership across four continents, RUWAI is an accredited Civil Society Organization with the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, endorsed by the Global Giving Foundation (USA), and fiscally sponsored by Fertile Ground Institute in Washington.
OUR 2023 MISSION
Our focus will be on increasing our contribution towards the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal, which calls for significant transformations in agriculture and food systems to end hunger, achieve food security, and improve the nutrition and income of the affected areas—increasing local ecological resilience, food systems, and livelihoods.
WHY NIGERIA?
Worldwide, Nigeria has both the largest number of people living in extreme poverty and the highest rate of deforestation.
Approximately 150 thousand hectares (almost 600 square miles) of forest and arable lands are lost annually, causing a decline in land productivity, resource conflicts, and food insecuri
This is no coincidence. As it’s poverty—4 out of 10 Nigerians live on less than 1 dollar a day—that drives over 90 per cent of the rural population to cut down carbon-storing forests to support themselves and their families.
Nigeria is also in the top ten countries most vulnerable to the ravages of climate change, including worsening (and deadly) drought, desertification, flooding< > (including the deadliest in over a decade this October) and soil erosion.
What’s more, oil exploration, spills, and leaks, and toxic e-waste from developed countries pollute vast tracts of land and bodies of water.
27,815
Lives & Livelihoods Transformed
30
Communities Impacted
82,000
Trees Planted
5,815
Children Nutrition Enhanced
WHIT YOUR HELP
Between 2021 – 2022, RUWAI has:
- Established two agro-processing businesses, feeding 2,100 people and adding to the income of 700 households
- Provided a water facility serving over 1000 community members and 600 students.
- Constructed a two-bedroom apartment for a disabled family living in poverty who survived a fire, and whose young daughter was severely burned.
- Trained and empowered 300 hundred farmers in sustainable agriculture and agroforestry while distributing early-maturing seeds and technical services.
- Trained 100 and equipped 25 rural youths, men, and women with beekeeping skills and startup kits.
- Trained 50 youth and women in solar energy installation, tailoring, knitting, and bag production
- Trained and supported local youth in watershed management and road erosion control, servicing thousands of community members and over 2,000 farmers.
- Planted 1,500 trees, restored 20 hectares (50 acres) of land, and prevented ~10,000 trees from being cut down, sequestering ~140 tons of carbon.
Your Support is Powerful.
- Agroforestry training and supplying rural farmers (including flooding victims) with trees and early-maturing seeds to strengthen local food systems and restore ecosystems.
- Teaching sustainable beekeeping for local livelihoods, rural development, and to reduce land degradation.
- Planting fast-growing fruit trees to improve nutrition among rural schoolchildren.
- Training local youths to build low-cost wells for household use and farming.
