Our Story
The Urban Mali Initiative is an endeavor to create gardens in every urban neighborhood. We believe that the only way this can happen is by creating social entrepreneurs among the gardener community in every locality. Having your friendly neighborhood mali to implement and maintain your garden in a professional manner can make plants be part of every household.
By empowering social entrepreneurs in the mali community, we hope to provide a dignified enterprise opportunity for many knowledgeable and humble people. We have seen that most gardeners around cities, simply help you plant exotic species that are available in nurseries and do not bat an eyelid when it comes to spraying pesticides as that is what they see as selling services amongst urbanites.
We are on a mission to empower them with tools that show to every urbanite aspiring to have a garden, the best choices to make when it comes to plants and pesticides. We advocate only native plants and use of natural methods for managing pests and nutrients that are friendly to the soil and environment. We would love to see the day when native plants are the first option for a garden and when every urban space becomes a rich ecosystem which is bio-diverse and healthy, despite the concrete structures that crop up every so often. We realise that this will happen if all malis in a city help to promote this cause.
