Who We Are:

Sandra Mardigian, Director

Sandra Mardigian founded Kilili Self Help Project in the early 1980s after several life-changing trips to Kenya, to raise money for the people in the rural community of Kilili with development programs that they prioritized and planned. These were projects such as a school, a medical clinic, women and youth groups, a gravity water project to serve 10,000 family farms, and others. In 1988, after successfully completing these projects in Kilili, she learned about Manor House Agricultural Centre (MHAC) in Kitale, where Kenyans were studying Biointensive farming, a whole-system, organic farming method based upon sustainable methods. Graduates of MHAC became certified trainers who would outreach to farmers to teach them the methods.

Since that time, Kilili has been dedicated to supporting the work of certified graduates of the two-year program at MHAC in their outreach to farmers.

Administering the programs of Kilili Self Help Project draws on Sandra’s personal and professional skills. After early careers in school teaching and business marketing, she spent 17 years at the Foundation for Global Community in Palo Alto, California, teaching courses, helping to produce seven PBS programs, and editing the Foundation's monthly newsletter, Timeline. Concurrent with her professional career over these years, Sandra’s volunteer fundraising project for Biointensive training for African farmers has grown from a few letters a month to administration of hundreds of programs that train tens of thousands or farmers per year.

She directs Kilili Self Help Project on a volunteer basis and overhead is privately funded, which allows every dollar donated to go directly to programs in Kenya and Uganda.

Partners
KILILI SELF HELP PROJECT
MANOR HOUSE AGRICULTURAL CENTRE
and ECOLOGY ACTION:

The synergy of these three organizations makes Kilili Self Help Project programs in Kenya and Uganda possible. The work is based on the GROW BIOINTENSIVE method of small-scale farming researched and developed by John Jeavons and Ecology Action. Manor House Agricultural Centre in Kitale, Kenya, certifies the trainers at the completion of a two-year course in GROW BIOINTENSIVE. Kilili Self Help Project provides the seed money to support the outreach of these certified trainers.
 

KILILI SELF HELP PROJECT
Mill Valley, California
Sandra Mardigian, Director

Provides funding for Biointensive farmer-training by Manor House Agricultural Centre (MHAC) graduates.

Kilili Self Help Project began in 1985 as an informal community development program with Kilili Village in Machakos, Kenya, in which the community met together and prioritized their needs, then sent proposals to Sandra Mardigian. She raised the funds and they contributed the labor. After all the projects proposed by the Kilili community were completed—building a water project, a school, a maize-grinding mill, and a dispensary and providing small amounts of support to women’s groups and youth groups—Kilili Self Help Project sent a group of primary school teachers from Kilili Village to Manor House Agricultural Centre (MHAC) for a week of Biointensive training in December 1989. The school gardens and on-farm results in Kilili were so successful that Kilili Self Help Project began to focus support on the Biointensive farmer-training programs of MHAC graduates. Ecology Action agreed to serve as fiscal sponsor. Over 86,000 farmers have been trained and are using the methods to attain food security, self-reliance and sustainability.

The founder and director, Sandra Mardigian, is the sole staff-person, and carries out the administration of Kilili Self Help Project on a volunteer basis. She donates all expenses and overhead (except for bank transfer fees). Therefore, all contributions to Kilili Self Help Project go directly to farmer-training programs in Kenya and Uganda.

Contact:
Kilili Self Help Project
260 Marion Avenue
Mill Valley, CA 94941 USA
ph: 415-380-0687
e: burckintl@aol.com
 

Kilili Self Help Project Advisory Board
From left: Moses Mukongo, Secretary; Samuel Nderitu, Chairman; Festus Wakhungu, Vice Chairman; Joshua Amwai, Treasurer.

The Advisory Board visits each applicant group. Where appropriate, they assist applicants to identify Biointensive trainers and plan their programs to ensure quality and sustainability. The advisors also follow completed programs to monitor progress.
 

MANOR HOUSE AGRICULTURAL CENTRE (MHAC)
Kitale, Kenya
Emmanuel Omondi, Director

Provides the two-year course in GROW BIOINTENSIVE where our Kilili trainers study for two years and are certified to work with farmers.

Manor House Agricultural Centre (MHAC) was founded and registered as a non-profit Trust in 1984, at a time when a three-year drought had caused severe hunger in many areas of rural Kenya that urgently underscored the need for new approaches to family farming.

The curriculum at MHAC addresses the goals of the United Nations and the World Food Council, which are calling for forms of agriculture that reduce chemical use, conserve and rehabilitate soil, improve farm productivity, conserve plant genetic resources, research and develop organic farming techniques, use and conserve local resources, and produce large amounts of calories from small areas.

MHAC and the outreach of its graduates have led the movement in Kenya to increase food security by introducing small-scale farmers to farming practices that make efficient use of limited resources, require few external inputs, and protect natural resources, especially soil fertility, for future generations.

MHAC promotes GROW BIOINTENSIVE, a low cost agricultural technology suited to small-scale farmers developed at Ecology Action in Willits, California, that emphasizes composting to improve soil fertility; deep soil preparation to enhance growth; mulching to conserve moisture; close spacing to increase productivity; and biological controls to manage pests and plant diseases.

Manor House Agricultural Centre’s training program includes a two-year residential certificate course; one-week workshops for farmers; and six weeks to three months short courses for community development practitioners. In addition, MHAC has developed 25 mini-training centers in village settings to extend these techniques to women's groups and farmers.

Contact:
Emmanuel Chiwo Omondi, Director
Manor House Agricultural Center
Private Bag, Kitale, Kenya
e: mhac@africaonline.co.ke

 

ECOLOGY ACTION
Willits, California
John Jeavons, Executive Director

Continuously researches and develops the GROW BIOINTENSIVE® method, which is the basis of the curriculum at Manor House Agricultural Centre (MHAC) in Kenya where our trainers study to become certified to teach farmers.

Ecology Action was founded by John Jeavons to apply scientific research in order to discover and develop the most efficient natural, biological, whole systems approach to small-scale farming. Ecology Action is a non-profit organization and has over 26 years of experience researching, developing, and teaching GROW BIOINTENSIVE® around the world, training practitioners in the United States, Mexico, Kenya, Russia, India, the Philippines, and over 100 other countries.

Jeavons is the author of How to Grow More Vegetables, Fruits, Nuts, Berries, Grains, and Other Crops than You Ever Thought Possible on Less Land than You Can Imagine, which provides a primer on the synergistic, combined Biointensive methods found by Ecology Action to produce the most food on the least land. This book is the basis for the course at Manor House Agricultural Centre in Kenya where the Biointensive trainers whose outreach to farmers we sponsor are certified.

Method:
The GROW BIOINTENSIVE® Food-Raising Method developed by John Jeavons and Ecology Action is an easily learned whole-systems, organic method of raising food crops that dramatically increases crop output and soil health. GROW BIOINTENSIVE® soil preparation creates growing beds with more surface area, maximizing nature's life processes. Beds are double-dug, with soil loosened to a depth of 24 inches to aerate the soil, facilitate root growth, improve water retention, and allow healthy growth of micro-organisms. Fertility of the soil is maintained through the use of compost. Intensive planting (close-spacing) of plants increases yields, facilitates the optimal use of nutrients, light, and water, and creates a vibrant mini-ecosystem under the canopy of leaves. The use of open-pollinated seeds helps to preserve genetic diversity and enables gardeners to develop their own acclimatized cultivars. Companion planting takes advantage of natural synergies; also, some plants attract helpful insects and other repel pests. A focus on the production of calorie farming for the gardener and carbon farming for the soil ensures that both the gardener and the soil will be adequately fed and that the farm will be sustainable.

Contact:
Ecology Action
5798 Ridgewood Road
Willits, CA 95490-9730
ph: 707-459-0150
e: johnjeavons@growbiointensive.org

Learn more about Ecology Action here: http://www.growbiointensive.org

Buy John Jeavon’s book How to Grow More Vegetables, Fruits, Nuts, Berries, Grains, and Other Crops than You Ever Thought Possible on Less Land than You Can Imagine online.