Planting 15000 trees in Madagascar

Sometimes a picture or two says it all, if you know what you are looking at. Voilà the photo above. (Which can actually be translated into English as “look and see”.)

But there is more to the pictures, than just rows of seedlings. In our last report, we talked about relocating the tree nursery next to the schools. The point of this move was with two goals in mind: greatly increase the area to grow tree seedlings and actively involve the students in caring for the young trees to be.

To our utmost delight, the new tree nursery area proved already to be too small. As you can see in the pictures, they moved into the Mango Forest next to the school to grow more seedlings. With the tremendous success of our improved cookstove project, the demand for seedlings for reforestation has skyrocketed. (To participate in the improved cookstove workshops a comittment to reforestation is a requirement.) If we need more trees, we need more growing space.

With the onset of the rainy season, the time for tree planting is approaching fast. And we hope to be ready to meet the demand.

Links:

• Increasing the tree nursery

In anticipation of increased demand for tree seedlings since we started our improved cookstove project, we moved the tree nursery in both villages to the school grounds. This greatly increased the available space of the growing area.

In the past decade, our gardeners had the plant nursery right next to their respective houses. They could keep a watchful eye on their seedlings, literally in their backyard. But by the same token, space was limited inside the village.

Moving the (tree) nursery to the school, has the additional benefit that the students can be directly involved with growing, tending, and watering all seedlings for the reforestation project. This direct involvement in growing seedlings for our reforestation is in addition to their school gardens, where they grow food to eat.

There is one thing we can’t do much about yet: the weather. Madagascar was at the time of moving the nursery in the school yard still in the dry season (which makes not such great photos). Seedlings need water, our gardeners assure us, and that with the start of the rainy season seedlings and subsequent tree planting will take off.

Now to a bit of housekeeping:

We hope you will join us December 3 for GlobalGiving’s #GivingTuesday campaign.

• GlobalGiving’s 2019 #GivingTuesday Campaign will begin Dec. 3, 2019, at 00:00:00 ET and end at 23:59:59 ET on Dec. 3, 2019.
• There will be a $500,000 Incentive Fund on #GivingTuesday.
• The Incentive Fund will be distributed to participants proportionally based on final fundraising totals. This means that, at the end of #GivingTuesday, the projects that bring in the most dollars will win the largest portion of the Incentive Fund and every project that activates donors will earn something. More details

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Become a recurring donor and your first monthly donation will be matched 100% by GlobalGiving. Recurring donors are the backbone of our budget, since monthly contributions are less challenging and nerve-racking than banking on events such as Giving Tuesday or end-of-year giving to raise the money needed to make our work possible.

Links:

• Jean our Master Gardener and his nursery in his village
• Both nurseries in our villages are growing lots of baby trees
• Growing Moringa oleifera in Madagascar