About the Mathare Shamba Community Garden
The Mathare Shamba was started in 2010 by a community based organization called Mathare Bondeni Recovery. This group of local residents secured the land rights to a large plot near the Mathare River, and started to grow local foods to supply the hungry neighborhood with free healthy food. The recovery group maintains the shamba to the best of their ability but due to limited financial resources, pollution and vandalism (trash dumping on the site and goat invasions) amidst rampant unemployment and food insecurity in Mathare, the garden needs some upgrades. With a group of volunteers from UN-Habitat, we have reached out to the legal, basic services, and design branches for support, and they are interested in supporting wider mobility and public space interventions on the site. Productive community spaces like urban gardens provide opportunities for dialogue, community partnerships, skill building, workshops, education and training on agriculture and waste management, and for leisure and recreation, which Mathare is severely lacking. These are the wider goals of our project.
Visit the Mathare Shamba Community Garden Website to read more about what they do!
“It’s the little things citizens do that will make a difference. My little thing is planting trees”
Wangari Maathai
Volunteering with the
Mathare Shamba Community Garden
Please support our project by donating, partnering with our group, or sponsoring our activities to bring fresh produce to the Mathare community with techniques like composting, permaculture gardens, crop rotation, sustainable clean water sourcing, and workshops.
Buy a tree which will be planted at our next tree planting event!
Jane Jacobs
“Cities have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when, they are created by everybody.”
With the blessing of the rainy season (October – December) the first harvest of the shamba (since the fundraiser generated $ for new seeds and tools) fruitfully blossomed. Dozens of sunflowers grew taller than the gardeners. We all had so much fun watching them grow. Sunflowers were planted because they remove toxins from the soil.
The shamba also produced GREEN BEANS, ZUCCHINIS, and tons of SUKUMA WIKI (collard greens)… the cabbages did not survive somehow this time, but we will learn why for next time. MBR also planted 4 trees in the shamba.
