La Vie LekkiLekki Life
October 7, 2025
In August 2025, our third (!) batch of trees went in the ground to help keep Kolda cool. 100 trees were planted in the compounds and streets of the local boosters of the soccer team ASC Neema, a neighbourhood in Sikilo, which is part of the city of Kolda.
ASC Neema has a lot of fans who pitched in to get trees in the ground:
Here, ASC Neema’s first president, Mr. Goudiaby, explains how is tree is named after his granddaughter, who will take care of it, which is why he’s confident in its survival:
Congratulations and thank you to ASC Neema for sponsoring our third planting. We look forward to seeing 100 healthy trees at our first check-in next month.
September 25, 2025
Happy 5th anniversary to Lekki Lekki.
As you can see from the above, our 2024 planting has fared much better than our pilot planting, with a survival rate of 88% versus our pilot planting’s survival rate of 61% at the same point, after twelve months.
Why so much better? More mature seedlings made the difference. The other two learnings – geomatics software and policies around data capture – have also been put into action, but have little to do with the superior survival rates. Stewards’ greatest concern, when asked, was around pest management. Not goats – we have the tree protectors (by far the most expensive part of each planting) to keep the goats away. We’re talking about bugs… the learnings continue.
Most trees have managed to survive, though. Here’s a few of the Dental and Reveil trees after their first year in the ground. These are all cordia trees:
Thanks to Dental and Reveil’s stewards taking on the jobs of raising trees in cities, Kolda is now cooler, cleaner, prettier, and has better drainage – and Dental and Reveil live on!
June 20, 2024
In Kolda, Senegal yesterday and today, two local soccer teams – Dental and Reveil – put 102 trees in the family compounds along the streets of Kolda. Above is the happy dance and tree of one newly recruited steward. The two teams will celebrate with a friendly match at 5 pm / 1 pm ET, today.
À Kolda, au Sénégal, hier et aujourd’hui, deux équipes de football locales – Dental et Reveil – ont planté 102 arbres dans les concessions familiales situées le long des rues de Kolda. Ci-dessus, la danse joyeuse et l’arbre d’un steward nouvellement recruté. Les deux équipes célébreront aujourd’hui avec un match amical à 17 h / 13 h HE.
August 2023
We closed our initial pilot in August 2023 with 115 suriving trees out of the original 310 planted.
The key learnings that will be applied to our next planting:
- Trees need to be old enough to survive. Since so many of the initial tree losses were due to the trees being too you, going forward no longer plant trees that are too young to survive – even if they are free, as they were in our pilot project.
- Geomatic software needs to be leveraged. While the manual sending and classification worked (just barely!) for the pilot, it is not scalable, sustainable or efficient.
- Data capture policies need to be created and enforced. The software, and LekkiLekki, cannot optimize for data hygiene otherwise.
Our pilot delivered a lot more than what is on the list above, including water management techniques, more efficient ideas for paying our stewards, and more effective ways to shield the young trees from goats. Trees did better inside the yards as opposed to outside the walls. The fruit from the fruit trees planted turned out to be more highly prized than we had expected.
We are excited for Kolda’s soccer clubs to get our next round of trees in ground in June 2024 with our next round of partners from the Sports and Culture Association of Kolda:
From left to right: Michel Mané, Président ASC Le Reveil, Sikilo, Kolda; Bécaye Dabo, Président, ASC Dental, Sikilo, Kolda; Abdoulaye Souaré Diallo, ASC Dental, Sikilo, Kolda
Monsieurs Mané, Dabo and Diallo have agreed to mobilize their community soccer club (Réveil and Dental) to recruit our the next class of tree stewards over the next several months so we are ready to go in June.
August 19, 2022
The data is in.
After two years of tree stewards planting 310 trees for our pilot project, and two years of quarterly payouts to stewards upon receipt of a photograph demonstrating growth of each tree, we are pleased to report that Sikilo neighborhood in Kolda, Senegal now has 157 more trees than it had two years ago – in and near homes, where they cast shade, retain soil and help keep moisture in the dry air (and some – soon – will bear fruit). What an excellent legacy for our partner on the ground, Jam Jam, to claim in their city.
So what happened to the other 143 trees? They died. We noted that the majority of trees that we lost were not the more mature young trees we paid for, but were the less-developed saplings we received for free from Eaux et Fôréts.
We learned that our partner on the ground, local soccer club Jam Jam, is more than willing to go beyond the initial tree planting and carry the project through the full two years. We assumed Jam Jam would not be interested in the long-term commitment of paying out based on successful photos over the next two years, but we were wrong. When Jam Jam learned we planned to outsource the payouts to a third party, they expressed their disappointment, and so we hired a representative of the club to administer, and he has done an excellent job.
We learned that the $10 per tree quarterly payouts was the right size as that amount enabled us to reach more locations but still made a meaningful difference to stewards, based on stories shared with our administrator on the ground. Families used it to buy rice as well as clothing for holidays.
Finally, we learned we have a lot to learn about all the ways we can make this incredibly manual photo management process simpler. Ensuring the photographer has turned geotagging on their phone when taking the quarterly tree photo, exploring geomatics software, and offering mobile credits instead of cash are our highest priorities to make our next project, slated for January 2023, go more smoothly.
Mark your calendars. Starting December 1, 2022, anyone wanting to support LekkiLekki’s efforts will be able to do so.
August 8, 2020
LekkiLekki’s inaugural planting launched on the 8th of August in 2020, in Kolda, Senegal, a bit of hope in the middle of the global COVID-19 pandemic. With the help of young athletes from legendary local soccer club Jam Jam, and the expertise of their alumni, families in Kolda agreed to foster 300 trees.
La plantation inaugurale de LekkiLekki a été lancée le 8 août 2020, à Kolda, au Sénégal, un peu d’espoir au milieu de la pandémie mondiale de COVID-19. Avec l’aide de jeunes athlètes du légendaire club de football local Jam Jam et l’expertise de leurs anciens élèves, les familles de Kolda ont accepté de favoriser 300 arbres.
If a tree grows in Senegal, does it make a sound? Heck yes! Sign up here to hear it.
Si un arbre pousse au Sénégal, fait-il un bruit? Mais oui! Inscrivez-vous ici pour l’entendre.