Agnes is the coordinator of Chongoo Tree Nursery and its parent group, Cheptengis Okilgei Group. Her group is the umbrella body for all the 38 tree nursery initiatives in Elgeyo Marakwet County. Of the 38 groups, 7 are youth groups while the remaining 31 are women groups with an average population of 20 members per group.
Her motivation for founding Cheptengis Okilgei Group was to conserve water catchment areas. Being a farmer, she was deeply concerned by the degradation of Cherangany Forest as it would affect the rainfall patterns and ultimately crop yields.
The group conducts tree nursery set up trainings, community empowerment and creates employment for the locals that manage the nurseries. The youths have been encouraged to forgo alcoholism and dedicate themselves to tree planting as an economic activity. The group’s activities are funded by donors such as World Vision (under the Regreening Africa Programme) and the County government. Once grown, the trees are sold to partners such as Equity Bank and WWF. Net Fund recently donated 500,000 planting tubes to Chogoo Tree Nursery to aid in expanding their production capacity.
The group’s activities have afforded the women members an opportunity to be self sustaining. The group donated 20,000 seedlings in September 2021 to the youth in Elgeyo Marakwet to plant in their homes as part of their CSR. The trees donated were Cypress and Grevillea.
Their primary challenge is the cultural constraints that hinder women from benefiting financially from selling their trees as the trees always belong to the men. However, this is slowly improving as women take up more leadership positions in the tree nursery groups.
