'Bamboo Adoption in Kenya' National Documentary
by Wendy Omanga (Moonlight Initiative)
About
Wendy Omanga
Wendy Omanga is a graduate of the University of Nairobi, with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Communication. In 2018 December, she was crowned as MissJournalism World Kenya representative by an international beauty pageant in Arusha, Tanzania. Following her passion for leadership and innovation, she was trained by Emerging Leaders Foundation on Digital Advocacy skills to help her spearhead her advocacy in Climate Action and Bamboo as a sustainable alternative to mitigate climate change.
In 2019, she was appointed one of Kenya's Global Goodwill Ambassador due to her humanitarian works and volunteering ventures. In 2020, she became alumni of the first cohort of Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI- Regional Leadership Center- East Africa) fellowship on Sustainability and Circular Economy due to her river Nyando Bamboo Restoration project, which is called moonlight Initiative. In August 2020, Wendy Omanga was got an award from the Top 35 Under 35 Youth of the year in Conservation, Environment and advocacy.
As a professional fashion model and beauty queen in Kenya, it is her desire to start her own sustainable Bamboo fabric fashion brand as she champions Climate Action. Find her on social media as:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wendyomanga
Instagram: https://instagram.com/wendyomanga
Twitter: https://twitter.com/WendyOmanga
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wendy-omanga-4b898a104/
Moonlight Initiative
Moonlight Initiative is a youth lead Sustainability and Circular economy Consultancy based in Nairobi, Kenya. Moonlight Initiative was founded in the year 2018 as a result of over flooding of River Nyando, which caused loss of property, and caused death in the community of Nyando. This caused Wendy Omanga to begin research that will mitigate the negative effects of climate change while at the same time creating employment for the community of Nyando. This led to Moonlight Initiative's first flagship project which singled out Bamboo as a sustainable crop, suitable to plant along river Nyando in order to mitigate the negative effects of climate change. To add to it, bamboo has over 10,000 value-added products which have the potential to create employment for the Nyando community.
In the month of June 2020 right after the YALI fellowship, Moonlight Initiative got funding and support from International Bamboo and Rattan Organization (INBAR) to facilitate River Nyando Bamboo restoration activities and capacity building on the ground, by a partner CBO called Nyando WRUA. The Moonlight team managed to map over 50 new farmers in an effort to map the river and create bamboo awareness. The team began planting bamboo along river Nyando in the first week of July. Our future plan is to establish the Nyando Bamboo nursery to have more storage capacity and a variety of species. We also plan to train our farmers on Bamboo value addition, as we transition them from a restoration exercise to a business trade through value addition. We also plan to engage investors and other donors to support us in acquiring the Bamboo value addition technology, which will help our farmers produce world-class bamboo value-added products, from Nyando to the World.