Good Morning TREES Members and Friends of the Organization,

As we come to the end of another planting season, we turn from looking at what we have accomplished this year to planning for what we will do next year.  In 2009, which marked our 20th anniversary, we saw major progress across all of our programs, while we also dealt with blows such as the tragic loss of John Bosco, our Burundi Field Representative, due to cancer.  

Meanwhile the global situation remains tense.  Climate negotiations in Copenhagen are stalled.  In Haiti, criminal gangs are terrorizing the border with the Dominican Republic, staking out claims on illegally harvesting trees for producing charcoal.  Groundwater levels in India continue to drop dramatically, and logging and monocultures of soybean carve out huge chunks from the Amazon rainforest every day.

Although there is no easy solution to this crisis, our recently compiled 2010 plan of action and budget details an ambitious, challenging, and expansive program that helps communities in need and brings hope to more communities around the world every day.   This is only possible thanks to the generosity of individuals and businesses around the world who have made planting trees part of their way of life.  We want to say thanks, from all of us, on behalf of all of our tree planting partners and communities around the world, to all of you.

Hot News

• News from the Field
  
  • Improving Production In Guaranata, Brazil
  • Training Peace Corps Volunteers In East Africa
  • Update From Field In India
  • Ethiopia - The Rebu Project
  • 2009 Best Pictures On Flickr
• Great Last Minute Holiday Gifts - E-Certificates
• Featured Business Partnerships
• Two New Ways To Help Plant Trees
      Car, Truck, Boat and RV Donations
      E-Bay Giving Works
  
• Join Us On Facebook
• Download TREES Winter Newsletter & 2010 Plan of Action
• TREES Project Pictures on FLICKR
• TREES is on Skype

Ethiopia - Harvesting the highly nutritious leaves of Moringa oleifera in the Guraghe Zone

News from the Field
Improving Production in Guaranata, Brazil
Vitoria lives in the settlement in Guaranta, São Paulo State, Brazil.  She produces corn, milk, and when the prices are high enough, cassava. She has endured many difficulties in establishing her farm.  She spent four years camping and moving throughout the farm before she was given a title to her land.  Most recently she has had setbacks due to strong winds.  She had a nursery crushed by winds and has not harvested any coffee beans because the flowers are blown off the bushes before they can produce fruit.  She has chosen to plant seven species of trees in a windbreak.  This windbreak will not only protect her coffee flowers, it will also maintain soil moisture and will provide nutrients through the loss of leaves and small branches.  She looks forward to January when she will transfer her seedlings from the nursery to the field.

Training Peace Corps Volunteers in East Africa
David Tye, TREES East Africa Regional Program Coordinator, participated in an In-Service Training (IST) for Peace Corps, Tanzania in Morogoro, Tanzania earlier this month.  He conducted several sessions with Peace Corps Volunteers from the health and environment sectors, including a session on the uses of various agroforestry tree species. He also covered a session on agroforestry technqiues, where he discussed windbreaks, boundary planting, living fences, biomass transfer, and contours and terraces.

The Trees for the Future Tanzania Program has been working well with Peace Corps volunteers for over a year now. Many of the new volunteers who have been at their sites for only 3 months have already started tree nurseries with their communities. Next year's partnership with Peace Corps should prove to be even more fruitful as more farmers are trained in agroforestry and more trees are planted throughout Tanzania.

Update from Field in India
TREES India program began in 2004, when many local NGOs contacted us in the aftermath of the Tsunami, looking for ways to rehabilitate salt-damaged farmland.  Since then, we have expanded as groups and individuals look to us for assistance in addressing a wide variety of issues.  Gorav Seth, TREES India Program Coordinator, is currently in the field, where he is meeting new organizations, evaluating existing projects, and planning for the coming year.  Here is his update:

On this trip, so far I have visited projects and met with groups in Northern India.  So far I have met with many individuals and organizations, both small and large, in Uttarakhand, Haryana, Rajasthan, and Maharashtra, and soon I will be heading to visit our longer running projects in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh.  However, there is currently instability in Andhra Pradesh due to a proposed partition that would divide the state into 2 separate entities, which has hampered my ability to visit these projects.  I am currently postponing my visit to these sites, with the hope that the situation will resolve itself.  If things remain tense, I will try to discretely visit our project sites by a less traveled route from the south, to avoid the more volatile northern half of the state.

I will be posting pictures from my trip to a flickr set, and I sending facebook status updates and pictures from my mobile phone to our Trees for the Future Facebook profile, so you can easily follow the progress of my field work first hand.

Ethiopia - The Rebu Project
In November, Trees for the Future, with our partners Greener Ethiopia, initiated a sustainable tree planting and education project in the Gurage Zone of Ethiopia, near the town of Welkite. This multi-purpose, multi-year project will be funded by our partners Standard Brands, the makers of Zip firelighters, and Nature's Grilling Products.

Along with members of the local community, we will soon begin preparing seedlings that will be planted during the rainy season in 2010. Many of these seedlings will be planted to restore areas in the Gurage Zone that are degraded and unproductive due to overgrazing and unsustainable farming practices.  Trees will be planted in a large multistorey community forest garden that will incorporate many species of trees, shrubs and vegetables. Collectively, these trees and plants will provide a sustainable and diverse source of food, fodder, wood and other forest products, for the community, while improving the health of the land, increasing biodiversity, decreasing risk from climate change, and providing products for community members to sell in local markets.

In conjunction with preparing and planting seedlings, an integral component of this project will be providing training to impart knowledge and skills on agroforestry, sustainable land use, and income generating opportunities to farmers, womens' groups, youth groups and other land users in the Gurage Zone.

Many thanks to Standard Brands and Nature's Grilling Products for making this project possible!!

2009 Best Pics on Flickr
TREES Country Program Coordinators have pulled together some of our best pictures of the year into one set on flickr.  Please click here and have a look, and tell us which one is your favorite!

Haiti - A farmer moving trees to his fields for planting in Devanbare	Senegal - This windbreak is protecting Madou Ndiaye's garden from the harsh Sahel winds	Vitoria's coffee field will soon have a windbreak that will protect the flowers and increase yields

Last Minute Christmas Gifts
For those of you looking for a last minute christmas gift for any green friends, look no further than our Plant-a-Tree e-certificates!  We can make these in any amount, and can email e-certificates to you within 48 hours.  Click here to see sample certificates.

Business Partnerships
41pounds.org offers the perfect holiday gift to help you share your Green lifestyle:  the gift of a junk-free mailbox. The nonprofit 41pounds.org service stops your loved one’s postal junk mail – and keeps more trees in the forest providing oxygen for us to breathe and absorbing carbon to cool the planet. Gift certificates can be purchased and sent online at www.41pounds.org.

New Ways of Supporting TREES
We can now accept donations of Cars, Trucks, Boats, and RV's, through our partner, Action Donation Services.  Click here to go to our website to find out more.

TREES have enrolled in The E-bay Giving Works program, where sellers on E-bay can give a percentage from any sale to charity.  If you sell on ebay, it is easy to link your sale to TREES, which will help your auction stand out from the crowd.  We may even have an online charity auction especially for TREES next year.  Contact us for more information, or if you have something you would like to auction.

Join us on Facebook
For those of you who are new to facebook, or who have not joined yet, here is an invitation!  We plan to greatly expand our presence on facebook in 2010, both in our cause and on our profile.  With increased connectivity, we hope to be posting regular status updates from many of our field coordinators, along with pictures and stories from participants in the field.  Click here to go to our facebook page, from where you can also join our cause.

TREES Winter Newsletter and 2010 Plan Ready for Download
The latest issue of the Johnny Ipil Seed News, TREES's quarterly newsletter, is available to download from our website.  Click here to go to our news page, where you can download this newsletter.  Our Plan of Action for 2010 is also now available here.


TREES Pictures on FLICKR
TREES has an incredible range of pictures from the past 30 years and as we distribute more cameras and GPS units to our field representatives, we are receiving more than ever before. We are working hard to put our best pictures from all of our project areas online. You can see our pictures by going to http://www.flickr.com/photos/plant-trees/sets/ (no logins or passwords needed).  Enjoy and share with your friends! We have compiled a special set of pictures for our 20th anniversary, which you can see here.


TREES is on SKYPE
Our international friends and partners will be happy to know that TREES can be called for free using SKYPE. Our skype name is treesftf - call us!