Forests4Water Brazil: Community Climate Action

Dear wonderful donors and partners,

We hope you are all doing well and staying away from covid?

This week we have another couple of interesting news items to share with you, and once again neither of them would have happened without your ongoing support to our forestry project. Thank you, thank you!

Let’s start at the beginning. If it wasn’t for your support, we wouldn't be planting trees on isolated farms. And we wouldn’t be needing every conceivable vehicle at our disposal (and then more,) to get them there.  So, as you can imagine, over years of heroic service, every Iracambi Land Rover has acquired its unique collection of scars and bruises. Which is why we’re now entering a competition to win a new one – please wish us luck! Voting is open to the public, so we'll keep you posted, and, if we're among the finalists, we’ll be asking for your help!

Meanwhile down in the forest nursery, next season's baby trees are looking super healthy, and nursery manager Deivid is very happy with the first crop of seedlings that are flourishing on the on-farm nurseries. Fingers crossed that we don't experience any extreme weather events – some of our colleagues in the state of São Paulo (around 500 km south of here,) recently lost a lot of their seedlings to five straight days of frost.

And now for the second news item. We are delighted to introduce our new nursery assistant, Averaldo. He, too, is a member of the local community who has recently discovered a real talent for working in the nursery. Welcome, Averaldo!

Not only do we have a new nursery assistant, we also have a new program coordinator -  Luiz. He´ll be joining us in a couple of months when he has finished up on his current job. We'll tell you more about him when he arrives, but here’s a newsflash. Luiz has fallen in love with the Serra do Brigadeiro mountains, and recently bought a piece of land adjacent to our new reforestry site. (This all happened completely independently of the job offer, but it has to be a good sign!) We are so happy to have a solid core of foresters in place before the planting season starts in October/November.

And finally for an item of housekeeping. We're busy scanning a bunch of receipts for larger expenses like salaries and items of nursery equipment. Every purchase we make comes with an official receipt for tax purposes, and, as you may suppose, not every supplier is eager to provide them…. We'll enclose them in our next letter. But we wanted you to see a little of where your money goes.

So many thanks for all your support, and we'll talk soon. (And, if we're among the finalists for a new car, we'll let you know right away!)

With love and appreciation from the Iracambi Forestry Team

PS Did you notice the carbon counter on our website?

Dear wonderful donors and partners,

We hope you are all doing well and staying away from covid?

This week we have a couple of interesting news items to share with you, because neither of them would have happened without your ongoing support to our forestry project. Thank you, thank you!

Let's start with the name of our project. Forests4Water. Last week we had an ecstatic contact from one of the local farmers Rosilene. She wanted us to know that, thanks to our reforestry efforts, her spring which had completely dried up, is running again. And – we are in the middle of the dry season!

We can't attach a video to this letter but here is a screenshot from the video she sent.

And yes, this is the object of the reforestation project – protect and restore water resources. But it’s so exciting when we can show the results!

Now for the second news item. In a small community like this, news travels fast, and for some time we’ve been attempting to create partnerships with local business and raise awareness over the importance of protecting the extraordinary forest in which we are lucky enough to live. It’s a slow process, particularly in view of other priorities such as covid, lockdowns and economic downturns. So we were especially happy to host a visit from nineteen staff members of the local cooperative bank which has decided to put its money where its mouth is and take active steps to offset their carbon footprint.

Since our mountains and forests shelter an important watershed that directly serves thousands of downstream water users, protecting water sources is an important place to start.  So we spent a happy day showing them the Iracambi campus, taking them on a forest trail, and explaining the nuts and bolts of reforestry. We then took them to visit a neighboring property where they were able to understand the critical importance of protecting water resources, and also see the spring that they are in the process of adopting. 

We are so excited to see the growing interest among the local business community of the importance of ecosystem restoration and we look forward to raising more awareness and recruiting more partners. Nothing succeeds like success! 

So once again, we want to send you a big thank you for your help and support. We'll keep you posted. 

With love and appreciation from the Iracambi Forestry Team.

PS In response to a pointed comment from that group, we are installing a carbon counter on our website!

PPS We've also been busy interviewing for the post of project coordinator. We had a lot of interest and in our next letter we´ll introduce you to the newest member of the team.....  .