On May 6th 2026 we participated in World Earth Day with Plants for Life and the Miti Alliance Kenya and others, to plant a total of 400 biodiverse Indigenous trees in 2 hours.  The Rain Starts With Us team of 4 proudly planted 72 of those.  We were also invited to screen the film by our host, ecologist Mark Nicholson who praised the film.  Mark has been collecting East African plants for 30 years and now grows over 600 tree and shrub species. He's a passionate forest restorer still actively removing invasive species to replace them with indigenous trees like  Kenyan Croton and African Cherry tree among others. Here is the wonderful team with 2 of our banners amongst them.

Kakamega Tropical Rainforest, a last remnant of the ancient forests of the Congo basin that once dominated Africa's equatorial centre. Kakamega has rich species diversity, and we are told is home to endangered African grey parrots and Kenya's only rainforest Braaza monkeys.  It is a very important 4,000+ha, gazetted as a National Park in 1986 but constantly threatened by deforestation.

Exotic Guava trees have not just thrived, but threaten indigenous tree types

The local people are welcome to help harvest guava wood from Kakamega and it is used a lot for fencing and firewood.  Beautiful as the trees and their pink-fleshed fruit and smooth bark may be,  their hard wood is both heavy to carry and tough to chop. They re-sprout easily and monkeys and birds spread their abundant seeds.  We planted replacement indigenous trees in a guava cleared glade which had been left rather sparse. 

It was wonderful to be part of this important restoration work and it inspired us to work harder to return to Uganda for our impact programme as soon as we can. (Hopefully October).  
Donations towards this welcome Thank you.