Let's Plant Trees in Haiti, Together!

KPM and  APTK had a joint project funded by the Lambi Fund that sustained extensive damage with the passage of Hurricane Matthieu in the Southern Department a cuple of years ago. As part of these projects the Organizations had to produce 120000 seedlings each and distribute them to members to plant in their fields and make small community forests in several localities. Like many other projects in the Department, these projects were not finalized due to the hurricane that destroyed several nurseries and carried away many Organization staff. As a result, Lambi launched a rehabilitation program in the southern area to help all of the partners who were affected by the Hurricane. 

The objective of this special support was to enable the Organizations to produce 120000 seedlings to replace those lost. It would also help them continue their reforestation program for 9 locations in 2 areas. 

 As part of a planned launch day for each of these Organizations in this rehabilitation phase, the Lambi Fund has been thinking with the Organizations on the following points:

- Redevelopment of existing committees (management committees and local commissions)

- Have an inventory of material needed to conduct the activities;

- Select localities where tree nurseries are set up and select nurses who will take care of nurseries in each locality;

- Identify seedlings the Organization will produce in nurseries;

- Think about water problems and look at the state of the cisterns that should receive water especially in the selected areas.

Following discussions at the KPM assembly, members chose to make approximately 20,000 seedlings at 6 sites.  The Lambi Fund has agreed with the Organization to put more seeds than expected because there are always seeds that do not germinate after sowing. In this sense the decision was made to buy 130000 bags per Organization rather than 60000 which was predicted. Organizations would produce these seedlings in 2 seasons (60000 / season), each season lasting 6 months.

Material Purchases: The Lambi Fund began making the necessary payments so that the Organization began purchasing the tools and materials needed to start the project. The organizations mobilized members of the procurement committee to carry out this task. They bought wheelbarrows, rakes, sprinkler pumps, decoctors, sprinklers and 65000 bags.

 Construction:  Lambi Fund helped the Organization with money to buy the materials they would need to build their nurseries. The organizations were also involved, especially in the excavations and in setting up the framework. The project management committees and the small commissions of each locality performed the mobilization work they had to do in order to get their members involved in their work. Organizations have been conducting multi-day commutes in each of these locations to build upthe nurseriea andit is complete. The accomplishment of this activity was coordinated by the Organization Coordination Committee.

Bag Filling: This activity requires a lot of member involvement because they have to mix soil and manure before they start filling their bags. This activity lasted about a month. Despite the mobilization of the members, many of them were already preparing their land for planting because rainy seasons were coming. APTK went even faster than KPM because for that period it had completed all 65000 bags while KPM had completed the  58963 bags out of the 73800 it had planned to complete.

Seed Buying and Seeding: KPM already had all the money to carry out this activity, so only APTK needed to buy seed. This activity was not achieved at a rapid pace because the Organizations did not reach all the seed needed in the period. Finally, the Organizations purchased seed (fruit and forest trees) that could be  distributed to each locality to begin.

Nursery Care: The organizations completed 6 nurseries: KPM 4, APTK 2, and hired attendants to care for seedlings in nurseries. The main tasks of nursery attendants are to: Look for seedlings to lift, remove grass from the bags, identify emerging diseases, treat them and water the seedlings. Organizations are always asking members to participate in the work they are doing to learn all the techniques, but also to save many dead seedlings in nurseries because of severe drought that has fallen on nursery areas.  There was a great deal of difficulty getting water to water the plants in the nurseries.

In spite of all the provisions of the organization, not all seeds were germinated and the sun also burned many seedlings that had already risen due to the drought. In this condition KPM lost 43310 seedlings out of 74856, or 57.99% of the seedlings that started to rise. APTK lost 21545 seedlings or a 34.75% loss.

Following this poor performance on the 6th month of the project, Lambi and the organizations made arrangements to correct the situation. In this sense, Lambi gave the Organizations another $7,000 gds each to buy more seeds for the bags.

The Organization produced an additonal 46088 seedlings, 24543 seedlings for KPM and 21545 seedlings for APTK. Thus, the Organizations had available to them 135412 seedlings (71512 for KPM, 63900 for APTK) to be distributed to members for planting in the fields. The first part of the production was distributed in the summer and the second part was distributed in the fall. More details to come in next report.