PATHWAY 2
Nutrition, Agriculture & Environment
Food security is both a health strategy and an education strategy. This pathway connects nutrition with climate-resilient agriculture, earned income, and environmental stewardship.
Why This Pathway Matters
Hungry children struggle to learn, and households cannot build resilience when food and income systems are fragile. The community is therefore building food systems that nourish learners while creating local income and restoring the environment.
Evidence Snapshot
Community and program records show a long-running food, livestock, greenhouse, beekeeping, water, and environmental pathway. Current community leadership reports that the system has grown to more than 300 chickens, more than 20 dairy cows, and two productive greenhouses that now supply a substantial share of vegetables used by the feeding program and the wider community. The goat project dates back to 2009, and repeated vegetable trials have helped the community test what grows well locally.
Earlier records show how that growth happened over time. A 2024 Dago Dala Hera activity record documented 9 cows distributed to families, 3 dairy cows at the children’s center, a poultry pilot with more than 50 chickens, and a beekeeping program involving 10 farmers and 20 hives. Toronto Metropolitan University preserves earlier beekeeping evidence, while Well Aware publicly documents a Dago clean-water system implemented in 2022.
The current figures are community/program-level operating evidence. In 2026, Friends of Dago introduced a quarterly Agriculture & Feeding Register to track livestock, production, food supplied to feeding programs, revenue, costs, participation, crop trials, environmental outcomes, and the connection between community production and child nutrition.
The long-term direction is to reduce the cost of feeding programs through locally productive, climate-smart systems rather than relying only on purchased food.
Community Leadership
Local farmers, community groups, schools, and Dago Dala Hera guide what can be grown, raised, restored, and sustained within the local environment.
Friends of Dago’s Role
Connect community plans to capital, technical partners, agricultural inputs, environmental expertise, and reporting support that can help systems scale responsibly.
Food & Farm Systems
Poultry, dairy, beekeeping, kitchen and school gardens, greenhouses, and agro-enterprise cooperative activity.
Nutrition Linkages
School and community feeding linkages designed to improve nutrition while connecting food production directly to learning outcomes.
Environment & Resilience
Tree nurseries, seedling projects, environmental restoration, and climate-resilient or regenerative food systems.
Explore the community food-system projects
Go beyond the summary figures to learn how locally guided agricultural activity connects to feeding, households and enterprise. Select a project for its documented history, current reporting status, community leadership and ongoing evidence needs.
- Community greenhouses & vegetables — 2 productive greenhouses reported.
- Dairy production — 20+ cows reported across community food systems.
- Poultry production — 300+ chickens reported.
- Goat rearing — ongoing project with roots in 2009.
- Community gardens & crop trials — continuing demonstration growing.
- Dago beekeeping — historical results documented; current scale under review.
2
Productive greenhouses supporting the feeding program and wider community vegetable supply.
300+
Chickens active in the broader food and livelihood system.
20+
Dairy cows in the current community food and livelihood system.
2030 Direction
Progressively increase the share of feeding needs supported through community production while strengthening greenhouse and climate-smart agriculture, poultry, dairy, goats, beekeeping, earned income, learning, and environmental resilience. Numeric 2030 targets will be set after the 2026 operating baseline is established.
Joint Effort & Partner Evidence
Two places, two distinct evidence sets. The livestock, greenhouses and feeding activities described above are Dago community food-system outcomes, guided locally by Dago Dala Hera and community producers. Greener Nairobi Urban Forestry is a separate, multi-organization urban project in Nairobi in which Friends of Dago serves as a local/lead implementation partner. Its planted-tree figures, volunteer participation and survival estimates belong to that Nairobi project and are not added to Dago village farm, tree or feeding totals. Visit the dedicated Nairobi project page for dated planting status, partner roles and evidence limitations.
Village Volunteers: historical public records connect the Dago partnership to agriculture, environmental learning, clean-water support, and community capacity building. These records help document the earlier stages from which today’s locally managed food and livelihood systems developed.
Heifer Project International — historical contribution: a 2013 Dago record says a Heifer Project International connection supported 16 community beneficiaries with 32 oxen and ox-ploughs plus 12 spraying pumps. The same historical record documents two Dago Dala Hera dairy cows supporting milk for children and generating surplus income. These figures are presented as dated farm-capacity evidence, not as current Heifer-supported assets.
Gloria S. Gladieux — greenhouse & feeding support: Friends of Dago donor records document sustained targeted support across 2023–2024 for the Greenhouse Development Program linked to the Dago Kogelo Primary School feeding program. Gloria had also visited Dago in 2022. Her support is recognized as an important stage in the greenhouse-and-feeding pathway, while today’s two productive greenhouses remain a community-managed system shaped by multiple years of local work and partner support.
Toronto Metropolitan University / Enactus Ryerson: university records document Project Dago’s beekeeping initiative and describe students teaching beekeeping to local villagers, linking environmental enterprise with the earlier microloan system. This is historical institutional corroboration, not a current livestock count.
Well Aware: publicly identifies Dago among communities connected to its clean-water work. Friends of Dago’s internal partner review places a Dago clean-water system in the 2022 period. Water is treated here as shared infrastructure supporting nutrition, learning, agriculture, and household resilience rather than as the achievement of a single organization.
Greener Nairobi Urban Forestry — implementation partnership: Friends of Dago serves as a local/lead implementation partner within the broader project framework. As of September 2026, project records report 9,300 of 11,228 contractual trees planted, with 1,928 remaining. Approximately 1,200 replacement trees are tracked separately to prevent double-counting. The Year-One cohort carries a working original-tree survival estimate of 87.4%, subject to final site-level validation. This Project is supported by One Tree Planted, Inc.