Field Stories · Events · Milestones

The Living Record
of Our Work

Every tree planted, every community rallied, every forest restored — written down so the land remembers. Browse the stories behind our impact, from the ground up.

29 Stories archived
4 Years documented
12 Event types
8 Counties reached
2025 11 stories

What Comes Next

GKI will return quarterly to monitor germination and carry out gap-filling. Satellite imagery from our partner organisation will track canopy closure over the next three years. The target: a corridor of indigenous woodland connecting Kibiku Forest to the broader Ngong Hills Conservancy.

" data-tags="Tree Planting,KFS Partnership,Ngong Hills,Community Walk,2025">
5KM Walk to Kibiku Forest
Event April 12, 2025

5KM Walk to Kibiku Forest

Two hundred volunteers marched through the Ngong Hills and planted 3,000 indigenous tree seeds alongside Kenya Forest Service rangers — in a walk that turned kilometres into canopy.

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4 min read · Ngong, Kajiado County
Restore Watamu Project Jan 2025

Restore Watamu: Mangrove Planting Day

Volunteers waded into tidal waters to press mangrove propagules into the sediment, restoring habitat that shelters fish, sequesters carbon, and guards the shoreline.

Read Story 3 min
Schools awareness Campaign Feb 2025

Deforestation Awareness Campaign — Ngong Schools

Six schools. 1,200 students. One powerful question: what happens when the trees are gone? A look inside GKI's classroom climate campaign.

Read Story 3 min
— Achieng, 24, Kisumu.

The cohort will reconvene in July for a field assessment day to review progress on their action plans.

" data-tags="Fellowship,Youth,Leadership,Climate,2025">
Climate Fellowship Program Mar 2025

GKI Climate Fellowship — Cohort 2 Launch

Thirty young Kenyans embarked on a three-week journey to become community climate leaders. This is the story of Week One.

Read Story 5 min
Dogo Kundu Project Jun 2025

Dogo Kundu Mangrove Restoration — Phase II

5,000 seedlings, 2 hectares, and an entire fishing cooperative working shoulder to shoulder with marine scientists to bring a lost estuary back to life.

Read Story 6 min
100K Trees milestone Milestone Aug 2025

100,000 Trees — A Milestone Story

The 100,000th tree was a fever tree planted in Ngong on a quiet Thursday morning. Here is what the number really means, and the people behind every one of them.

Read Story 7 min
Women's Nursery Program Oct 2025

Women's Nursery Cooperative — Harvest Day

Twelve women turned a patch of land into a KES 240,000 seedling business. A story about trees, income, and who gets to lead the green economy.

Read Story 5 min
"The forest does not belong to those who cut it down. It belongs to those who plant, and to every generation that will breathe because of them."
— Phyllis Mwambu, CEO, Greening Kwetu Initiative
2024 9 stories
PCEA Ololua
Project September 2024

PCEA Ololua Tree Planting Day

From choir robes to garden gloves — how a Sunday afternoon in Ololua sparked a faith-community green movement that now spans six congregations.

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4 min read · Ngong, Nairobi County
Nursery Tree Day Event Mar 2024

Nursery Tree Day — Raising the Next Forest

We opened our nursery gates and gave away 3,200 seedlings. This is what happened when 400 neighbours came to meet the trees.

Read Story 4 min
Student planting Event May 2024

Student Planting Day — Kibiku & Ololua

200 students, four schools, one question: what did you feel when you put the tree in the ground? The answers were remarkable.

Read Story 4 min
Dogo Kundu Phase I Project Nov 2024

Dogo Kundu Mangrove Restoration — Phase I

Baseline surveys, community training, and the first 1,200 seedlings into the water. The beginning of a project that would eventually return 5 hectares to the sea.

Read Story 5 min
2023 6 stories
Catholic Diocese Event Apr 2023

Catholic Diocese Tree Planting — April 2023

A bishop, a blessing, and 400 trees. How a conversation about Laudato Si' became a lasting partnership between the Church and the forest.

Read Story 3 min
School feeding Program Jul 2023

School Feeding Program — First Harvest

Seven months after planting, the Nalepo garden fed 300 students for a full term. A story about soil, hunger, and the children who stayed in school.

Read Story 6 min
Youth Summit Campaign Oct 2023

Greening Kwetu at the Youth Climate Summit

"Trees are not a metaphor — they are the work." GKI's keynote at the National Youth Climate Summit, and what happened in the months that followed.

Read Story 4 min
2021–22 3 foundational stories
GKI founding Milestone 2021

GKI is Founded — The Beginning

A conversation, a borrowed truck, and 47 trees. The origin story of Greening Kwetu Initiative — told without the mythology.

Read Story 5 min
PCEA Kimuka Event Apr 2022

PCEA Kimuka — First School Partnership

When communities choose their own trees, they tend to them more carefully. The lesson from GKI's very first institutional partnership.

Read Story 3 min
Tony Wild Foundation Milestone Dec 2022

Youth & Forestry — Tony Wild Foundation Grant

The grant that changed everything. How a kitchen-table application became GKI's first external funding and the moment it became a real organisation.

Read Story 4 min
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