Restoring Batwa Land Stewardship Through Regenerative Farming in Nyamirama

Restoring Batwa Land Stewardship Through Regenerative Farming in Nyamirama

Our Vision

This project takes place in Nyamirama Sector, on land where Batwa families continue to live with a deep memory of what was once a forest landscape. The forests that once provided food, medicine, shelter, and identity are no longer there in the same way, but the relationship with the land has not disappeared. It has only been interrupted.

We are working with Batwa families who still carry knowledge of indigenous crops, seed saving, soil care, and traditional ways of working with the land. This knowledge has survived through elders, even as access to land and opportunity has been reduced over time. We see this project as a way of bringing that knowledge back into daily life through farming, shared work, and learning on the land itself.

We are not introducing something new. We are working with what already exists, and helping it take root again in the soil.

Relationship with the Land

For generations, the Batwa lived in close relationship with forest ecosystems, where food, medicine, and materials were part of a living system. When access to these forests was lost, the physical connection to the land changed, and so did the spaces where knowledge was practiced and passed on. Today, many families in Nyamirama live on small or tired pieces of land. Many depend on casual labour to get through each week. Food is not always certain, and it is often children who feel this first when meals become smaller or less varied. Still, elders remember. They remember seeds that once grew well here, plants that fed families through difficult seasons, and simple ways of keeping soil alive without needing expensive inputs. That knowledge is still present in people’s memory, even if it is no longer part of daily life.

Our Regenerative Tending

Over the next 18 months, we will work alongside 150 Batwa households in Nyamirama to bring this knowledge back into practice through everyday farming and shared learning. Two community demonstration farms will be established where people can come together and learn by doing. These will not be formal training centres, but working spaces where soil is prepared, compost is made, seeds are shared, and planting is done side by side. Elders will teach from memory and experience, while younger people learn through practice and repetition. Around homes, families will be supported to create kitchen gardens. These will be small but meaningful spaces where vegetables, legumes, fruit trees, medicinal plants, and indigenous crops are grown for daily use. The goal is not scale, but consistency having something to harvest close to home, and slowly reducing the pressure of buying food every day.

Seed saving will also be supported so that local crops are not lost over time. Seeds will move between households again, the way they once did, so that planting is not dependent on outside systems. Alongside this, mothers and caregivers will gather to talk about food in a practical way what children are eating, what is missing, and how to make better use of what can be grown locally. These conversations are part of the farming itself, because food and care are not separate in daily life. As gardens begin to produce more food, families will slowly begin to share and sell small surpluses. A few bunches of vegetables here, a few seedlings there. Not large markets, but small exchanges that help households meet school needs, buy essentials, and reduce dependence on daily labour.

With Support

With support, 150 households will be able to turn knowledge into something they can use again in their daily lives.Two demonstration farms will be created as shared spaces where learning happens through doing rather than instruction. Kitchen gardens will begin to appear around homes, changing small parts of the landscape one household at a time. Indigenous crops that were becoming rare will be planted again. Trees will return around homesteads and pathways, slowly bringing shade, food, and protection back into the soil. This project is an effort to support that return in Nyamirama so that knowledge, land, and daily life can begin to work together again in a way that feels natural and lived, not imposed

What changes here is not only what is grown, but how people relate to the land again. Work that once felt disconnected becomes familiar again. Knowledge that was stored in memory becomes visible again in gardens, meals, and daily routines.

Communicating Change

The change in this project will not happen in a single moment. It will be seen slowly, in everyday life,It will be seen when a family walks into their own garden and finds something to cook. When a child eats vegetables that were grown a few steps from home. When a grandmother shows a young person how a seed is stored and knows it will be remembered again. It will also be seen in small shifts that are easy to miss but important over time. Soil that holds water a little better. Gardens that stay green a little longer into the dry season. Families that rely slightly less on uncertain work to get through the week.

Most significantly, it will be seen in how people speak about what they are doing. Not as something external or temporary, but as something that belongs to them again. It changes how families plan their days. It changes how children grow up understanding the land around them. It changes how elders are heard and valued. And it slowly rebuilds a sense that life can be shaped from within the community, not only from outside it.