This is What Impact Looks Like: Annual Report 2024-25

Dear Friends,

The first year of a garden’s development is nothing short of miraculous. What began here in Haffé as a barren, degraded peanut field has, in just one season, burst forth with life and possibility.

Before and After at Haffé Garden after just one season of garden activities. What was a barren peanut field is now a vibrant, thriving garden.

Andando’s impact here is clearly visible, and though the outward signs may differ, the story is the same across every program. Our partners are driving change in their communities, in their families, and in their own lives.

Click here to enjoy our annual report, which captures some of what that change has looked like over the past year. Behind every page is the commitment of rural communities in Senegal and the generosity of people like you who choose to walk alongside them. Thank you for making this work possible.

With gratitude,

Diégane Ndiaye
Operations Director

Garrison Harward
Executive Director

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Together we made a significant impact in 2025!

As we close the books on another year, we want to reflect on what we have accomplished together with our partner communities in 2025. One thing we have learned through this work is that, together, we can make a substantial difference in a very short amount of time.

Members of the Haffé Women’s Cooperative showcasing some of the vegetables grown in the garden.

A prime example is the women’s garden in Haffé. It was launched at the beginning of 2025, and in less than nine months, the cooperative reached its savings goal and grew over 20,000 pounds of produce!  For 220 women there, and more than 1,000 family members, life changed for the better this year with more food on the table, more income, more stability, and more confidence about what the future can hold. And that is just one small example of the impact you helped create.

Here are a few more highlights your support helped make possible this year:

• 41 women’s gardens and 1 school garden supported, including new gardens in Haffé and Senobowal

• Over 33,000 trees planted, bringing Andando’s total to more than 95,000 trees established in gardens, schools, health clinics, and farms

• Aquaculture added to 4 gardens, improving nutrition and income for over 600 families

• 4 new classrooms built, two at Ndiédieng Primary School and two at Guédé Village High School, with bathrooms and clean running water at each

• 190 microloans disbursed in Keur Socé, paired with trees and Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration training

• 1 new health clinic added in Ndiaguene, extending vital services to over 1,000 people, plus renovations at our Paymar clinic after a brutal rainy season damaged their roof

• The Senobowal borehole completed, bringing reliable, clean water to over 5,000 Indigenous pastoralists and helping them remain rooted on their ancestral lands with dignity

We are incredibly grateful for your support of Andando and our partner communities. Together in 2025, we reached more than 55,000 people, and the benefits of that support will continue for years, and in many cases decades, to come.

Monthly donors help make this possible. You can too! Start (or increase) a monthly donation today (click here for details).

From Barren to Bountiful in Just 6 Months!

Women from Haffé used to travel long distances to purchase vegetables to resell in their village.

Haffé is a small, remote village in Senegal’s Kaolack region, right in the heart of the “peanut basin.” For decades, peanuts have been the main cash crop here, but the relentless monocropping has left behind deforestation, depleted soils, and widespread poverty. It’s a tough place to start, but these are exactly the kinds of challenges where Andando’s community-led women’s permaculture gardens shine!

Back in February, over 200 women from Haffé planted their very first seedlings in their new four-acre Andando garden. For years they had tried to create a garden on their own, but without fencing or a solar pump system, the dream always slipped out of reach. The moment those barriers fell, it was as if the floodgates opened. Years of determination and vision burst forth, and the women dove in with extraordinary energy and ambition.

The garden site, originally a peanut field, had severely degraded soil and minimal tree cover.

The same field, just a few months later, is bursting with life and already beginning to heal.

And the results? Nothing short of incredible. By April, they were already harvesting lettuce and turnips. In May, they planted every single tree needed to create the full permaculture design (nearly 1,000 in total), building soil, protecting the land, and setting up the garden for long-term success. June brought green peppers, followed by tomatoes, eggplants, and hot peppers. Month after month, the harvests just kept coming.

By the end of July, this unstoppable group had harvested over 18,000 pounds of fresh organic produce and earned more than $8,600 in profits. Wow! Families now have vegetables on the table at every meal, women can pay school fees and buy medicine, and the village has the resources to overcome malnutrition.

We are so proud of these women. In just six months, they transformed barren land into a thriving, regenerative garden. And we’re proud of our staff too, who have refined garden establishment into such a science that we almost expect this kind of success now. Almost. It’s still thrilling every single time, and it makes us that much more excited to partner with the next community ready to take off.

Andando’s next women’s garden will take root in Senobowal, a village in northern Senegal on the edge of the Sahara Desert. Transforming this dry land into a thriving garden won’t be easy, but our team is ready for the challenge!

Watch the video below to see the progress that has already been made by getting water to families in Senobowal, and the next steps on the Women’s Garden that will feed the community.

Help us fund the garden construction my making a donation today, or signing up to be a monthly donor!

The Rains Are Here, and So Are the Trees!

Across Senegal, the first rains have arrived, and with them, the country bursts into green. For our partner communities, this marks one of the most important times of the year, a short but critical window when farmers work hard to grow the food that will sustain their families through the dry season. This is also a moment of intense work and opportunity for one of our most powerful tools in the fight against poverty and climate change: tree planting.

A member of the Haffé women’s garden plants two citrus trees in her plot, helping to establish the food forest structure.

At the request of our partners, Andando has been steadily increasing tree production at our two regional nurseries over the past three years. The goal is twofold: to meet our partners’ growing demand for trees and to support the scale-up of programs like our women’s gardens. Take our newest garden in Haffé, for example. Normally it takes a garden several years to complete their tree plan, but thanks to reliable in-house tree production, they were already able to plant nearly 1,000 trees in just their first three months!

The women of Sama Toucouleur received trees to bolster and repair their live fence.

Our team has worked tirelessly to produce over 40,000 trees so far this year. And even though the planting season has only just begun, they’ve worked with our partners to get more than 7,000 in the ground already! Few things are more hopeful than opening our Andando WhatsApp threads and seeing photo after photo of newly planted trees. The season is bursting with life.

Three Years of Impact and Counting!

The successes we’re seeing this year are the result of years of diligent effort and consistent support from our donors and partners like Rick Steves’ Climate Smart Commitment, who have contributed $130,000 over the past three years. This support has been instrumental in getting us to where we are today.

Andando’s Podor tree nursery established in 2023 now produces over 25,000 trees annually, which are provided free of charge to local residents.

In 2023, this partnership helped us lay critical groundwork in the north. We established a fully equipped tree nursery in Podor, complete with a deep borehole well and a solar-powered water system, providing the infrastructure needed to support large-scale, climate-resilient reforestation in this harsh landscape on the edge of the Sahara Desert. We also conducted a full census of our existing trees across partner gardens, confirming the successful establishment of 27,646 trees to date.

A member of the Togane women’s garden waters newly planted native Acacia Mellifera trees.

In 2024, we expanded that foundation significantly. A total of 26,530 new trees were planted across women’s gardens, schools, farms, and clinics in both Podor and Keur Soce. In Keur Soce, we upgraded the tree nursery water system to increase capacity for year-round tree production and we also took part in Senegal’s National Tree Day, contributing trees, labor, and logistical support to help advance national reforestation efforts.

Now in 2025, our focus is on scale, sustainability, and expansion through NEW partnerships. Steady production in our regional nurseries is supporting a second garden this year in Senobowal, which put together with Haffé will provide more than 400 women and their families with reliable access to nutrition and income. A new Farmer-Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR) training initiative is equipping 200 farmers in Keur Soce to regenerate and steward their own land. And in both Podor and Keur Soce, we’re supporting community-led efforts to establish local nurseries, giving partner communities the tools and training to lead reforestation efforts themselves.

Our newly completed borehole well and solar pump system in Senobowal opens up a whole new world of possibilities for tree planting in the region.

Thanks to a new partnership with the G20 Global Land Initiative, we’re also expanding reforestation efforts into the Dieri, the arid, pastoral lands of northern Senegal. If ever there was a front line of climate change, this is it. Starting with our dedicated partners in Senobowal, we hope to support remote communities across the region to reforest their lands and contribute to the Great Green Wall, helping to stop and reverse the spread of the Sahara Desert. We’re also now a newly recognized Environmental Partner of 1% for the Planet, which we’re hopeful will open the door to a broader community of potential supporters.

We’ve built a lot over the past three years, and we’re excited about what the future holds as Andando continues expanding its work. But for today, it’s time to stop talking about what’s next, and plant the rest of those 40,000 trees while the rains are still here!

In just over a year, the women of Wouro Kelle have built a thriving food forest, planting nearly 1,000 trees and harvesting over 20,000 lbs. of produce in one of Senegal’s harshest climates. This is an incredible example of what is possible through Andando’s women’s garden program.

From the Director - May 2025

We have water! The borehole at Senobowal hit water at 152 meters and was cause for much celebration by the members of the community!

I’ve just returned from Senegal, and I am blown away by the incredible progress we’re seeing on the ground. Like many in our sector though, we’re facing a rapidly shifting funding landscape that threatens our ability to do this vital work. That’s why we’re working closely with our team in Senegal to share Andando’s impact, like these updates below, with a broader audience.

A big thumbs up from Maguette from the Haffé Garden! These women overcame many challenges to get to this point. We give them TWO thumbs up back!

Since our last newsletter:

• The borehole in Senobowal is complete. At 152 meters deep and long dreamed of by the village, this well will begin providing clean water to more than 5,000 people next month,

• Mbantou Croissement celebrated its first fish harvest with a homegrown meal made entirely from garden and local ingredients. Both of our new aquaculture gardens are seeing major improvements in vegetable yields as well, thanks to nutrients provided by the fish,

• Our newest partner garden in the village of Haffé is also in full production, with the first harvests already coming in. In Keur Soce,

• More than 200 farmers took part in a training to help bring trees back into their fields. Andando will be providing them with additional trees during our next microloan dispersal to help to jump-start their restoration efforts,

• Finally, construction is moving forward at our two new partner schools, which will benefit over 1,200 students this fall.

Students at Ndiedieng Primary School sit four to a desk but with their new classrooms on the way this will soon be a thing of the past! Classrooms along with bathrooms and water taps will be completed before the next school year.

This is just a sampling of the incredible progress happening through Andando. As we begin sharing more videos and personal stories, I humbly ask you to help amplify them and invite others to be part of this journey. Senegal is making real progress in the fight against poverty, but the need remains great, and this is a critical moment to increase not decrease international support. Thank you for supporting this work and for everything you do to help spread the word about Andando.

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From the Director - February 2025

People often ask us about Andando’s “magic formula”—how do we continue to succeed where so many development projects struggle? I wish I could say it’s pure talent, but in truth, more often it’s diligence. We are constantly listening, learning, and adapting.

The new aquaculture fish farming basins are complete in our Mboyo Walo partner garden. The women here are quickly mastering this difficult new skill.

Take our women’s gardens, for example. To ensure their long-term sustainability, we’ve recently focused on improving financial literacy and savings. Last year alone, these gardens collectively added nearly $8,500 to their savings accounts, bringing the total balance to an impressive $41,000. And that’s on top of individual profits! The addition of fish farming has helped contribute to these results, and we’re thrilled to report that our two newest aquaculture pilot gardens are thriving, with their first harvest just a few months away!

The new pharmacist at the Paymar rural health clinic proudly displaying their full stock of medications and supplies, ready to serve members of their community.

Another example of diligence is our partner health clinic in Paymar, where the community has pooled resources to hire a new nurse and pharmacist to expand services; however, their efforts are hindered by a damaged roof. By continuing to monitor past projects and listen to partners, we can now help to resolve this issue with a new roof and possible expansion of the facility as well.

The leaders of the Haffé women’s garden sitting on the newly constructed watering basin. Soon they will transform this degraded landscape into a verdant oasis to support their families.

Lastly, I’d like to introduce you to our newest garden partners in the village of Haffé, near Keur Socé. This community has faced immense challenges establishing their garden, from flooding that delayed the project to a well that partially collapsed right when production was set to begin. However, through close collaboration with the women, village leaders, and local government, we were able to assist them in overcoming each hurdle, leaving the group of 220 women more determined and empowered than ever to start their garden.

Your diligent support of Andando allows us to continue to do this work the right way and create lasting change.