These people have just received a colored stick from us. They are trainers from the Kongwa district in Dodoma who will keep track of the number of trees and the height of each tree with these colourful sticks.

These facilitators specifically monitor the re-greening by the farmers they have trained before. For each height (color) the facilitators can shade how many trees a farmer has. For example blue (50-100 cm): 34 trees. Green (200 + cm): 12 trees. Etcetera. In the corresponding booklets they then note the number of trees with a certain height. The booklets have a page for every farmer who has been trained!

Later this year they can enter the data in an app (called KoboCollect). To do so, they also received smartphones. This way we can successfully monitor the re-greening  over a longer period of time. But until then writing down in a booklet is a nice way to start registering in a simple way. The app is also quite a challenge if you have never ‘swiped’ in your life, but the enthusiasm shows how much they want to learn!