The most valuable partner we have is not a funder. It is a district environment officer who tells us which stretch is about to be cleared.
Kinds of partnership
District and sub-county authorities
Joint site selection, technical input, shared monitoring. We work through your structures rather than around them, and we share credit.
Landowners
If you hold land on the Rwizi or a tributary, a buffer agreement costs you a few metres and gains you a stabilised bank. We supply the planting and the follow-up.
Institutions
Schools, health centres and colleges: rainwater harvesting, plus grounds planting where there is space.
Funders
We ask that grants cover monitoring, that reporting is proportionate, and that we can publish what we find even when it is unflattering.
What we bring
- Baseline survey and GPS records before anything is planted.
- Community negotiation done properly, which is the step most projects skip.
- Locally raised seedlings matched to the site.
- Twelve-month monitoring with published survival rates.
- Honest reporting, including when an intervention fails.
How a partnership starts
- 1
A conversation about what you hold
Land, a mandate, a roof, a budget or a research question. We will say plainly whether we are the right organisation, including when the answer is no.
- 2
A walk of the ground
Nothing is agreed from a map. Somebody from the field team walks the stretch with you, at the waterline, and comes back with a survey record rather than an impression.
- 3
Agreement in writing, in plain language
What each side does, over what period, and what happens if either side stops. Buffer agreements with households are written the same way and in Runyankole.
- 4
Planting when the season breaks
Not when a quarter ends. We have lost a cohort to planting late in the season and we will move a date rather than repeat it.
- 5
Six and twelve months later, the count
You get the survival figure for your site whatever it says. That is the part of the arrangement we are least willing to negotiate.
If you hold land on the river
This is the partnership that matters most and the one people are least likely to think of themselves as offering. Uganda's protection zone along a river is measured in metres from the bank, and on much of the Rwizi it has been cultivated to the water's edge, which is why the bank moves and why the water carries what it carries.
A buffer agreement means those few metres come out of cultivation and go back to bamboo at the waterline and deeper-rooted species behind it. We supply the survey, the seedlings, the planting and the follow-up. Where the ground taken out of production matters to a household's income, the livelihoods programme exists precisely for that, and the conversation happens before anything is planted rather than afterwards.
It applies to institutions as much as to farms. A school, a health centre, a dairy or a factory with frontage on the river or a tributary is holding the same few metres.
Questions landowners and districts ask
Do I lose the land?
No. The agreement covers what is grown on a strip of it, not who owns it. Nothing is registered against your title and nothing transfers to us.
What if I change my mind?
The agreement says what happens, in writing, before anyone plants. We would rather a household withdrew than felt trapped into something a field officer talked them into.
Who pays for the seedlings?
We do, and for the survey and the return visits. What we ask for is the ground and the conversation.
We are a district office, not a landowner.
Then the useful things are site approval, technical input and joint monitoring. We work through district structures rather than around them, and we share the credit publicly.
How long does the arrangement run?
A buffer takes about three years to establish and decades to reach full effect, so agreements are written for the long horizon with a review point rather than as a one-season arrangement.
Start with a conversation
Tell us what you hold, what you want, and what your constraints are. We will say plainly whether we are the right organisation.