By Paulomi Bhattacharyya | CREATE! Development Associate & Project Leader
Friends,
With heartfelt gratitude from the CREATE! team, I would like to report that with your support, not only did we finish our 2021 reforestation campaign successfully by planting 30,000 trees, but also are on our way in planning the 2022 efforts. Reforestation is an annual collaborative campaign in the CREATE! communities with our staff and our partner community members working together to plant trees in their garden and at various open spaces within the village, including schools and places of worship. Since 2011, CREATE! has embarked on this campaign every year and hopes to continue this program activity this year too with your help.
“Planting trees to usher in a true green revolution at the rural level has been a mission for CREATE! since the beginning”, says Diouf, CREATE!’s field coordinator who spearheads this campaign every year. To accomplish this goal, CREATE! has set up tree nurseries in all the partner communities every year. Diouf also mentions that through the awareness-by-example method followed by CREATE!, many people have seen trees from CREATE!'s nurseries grow, bear fruit and/or give a microclimate to their beneficiaries over a short period. This has resulted in requests from communities and villages for these trees to make their environment greener.
Many of CREATE!s staff recall how the reforestation program has always had an immediate as well as long-term effect on the communities. Ndeye Fatou, CREATE!s communications coordinator remembers how when she joined CREATE!, the community of Gagnick Mack was just starting and there weren’t any new trees. After their very first tree planting campaign, the transformation of the site was immediate. Few years later, the women started harvesting the fruits from their garden. CREATE!’s tree planting campaign helped them discover many trees they didn’t know before. Over the years, these communities have planted trees as varied as Beechwood, Albizia Lebbek, Samanea saman for shade, various citrus trees and nuts like cashews for food and trees like Acacia oleifera and Acacia melifera for living fences and windbreaks.
The variety of trees planted in the CREATE! community gardens generate a peaceful and shady region which becomes the favorite place for the beneficiaries in the hot months. Each and every community member is thus enthusiastic about this campaign and are appreciative of the techniques they learn from the CREATE! agricultural trainers on how to maintain these trees even during the hot, dry months. Their enthusiasm justifies the growth in the number of trees planted each year, from 5,000 trees in 2011, 10,000 in 2014, 15,000 in 2017, 20,000 in 2019, to 30,000 in 2021.
CREATE! hopes to plant 50,000 trees in rural Senegal in 2022. These trees help nourish the soil, reduce erosion, reduce air temperature and provide food, shade and windbreak.
We can make this campaign a success with your support
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By Fatou Thiam | Program Contributer
By Fatou Thiam | Program Contributer
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