Dear TREES Members and Friends of the Organization,

The devastation in Haiti is on all of our minds.  Thankfully, we got word via text message 36 hours after the first quake that Timote, our Haiti coordinator, is OK and safe in Gonaïves.  However, we are very sad to learn that he lost a family member and several good friends in the catastrophe.  Our thoughts and prayers go to our colleagues, their families, and everyone else who has suffered in Haiti.

Most communication is still down, including the internet, so we are still awaiting information about the rest of Timote's family and about other colleagues, partners and friends.  Once we can establish better communications, we hope to support Timote’s efforts towards providing and caring for the victims of this tragedy, and we will keep you updated on any opportunities to directly support the relief work.

TREES has been working in Haiti for over 6 years, and our program has brought sustainable development to many communities in the region affected by the earthquake.  We will be there to lend our hand in the recovery process, and we will be doing all we can in the coming weeks to support our Haitian friends in this time of great need.

  Tree News

• News from the Field
  
  • Partnership with Yéle Haiti
  • Burundi Agroforestry and Conflict Resolution Training 
  • Draft Telugu Manual Available for Download
  • Expanding Agroforestry Training Program
  • Update from the Philippines 
  • 2010 Plan of Action and Budget
    
• Great Green Valentines Day Gifts - E-Certificates
• Cast Your Vote for TREES
• Check out our 2010 Plan of Action 
• Featured Business Partnerships
• Two New Ways To Help Plant Trees
      Car, Truck, Boat and RV Donations
      E-Bay Giving Works
  
• Join Us On Facebook
• TREES Project Pictures on FLICKR
• TREES is on Skype

Haiti - The bare hillsides of Gonaïves

Haiti - Timote (front, left), Ethan, and community members of Desvase

News from the Field
Partnership with Yéle Haiti
Days before the tragic earthquake hit Haiti, Trees for the Future established a major partnership with the Yéle Foundation to bring relief to another region in Haiti which has been devastated by natural disasters in the past.  Yéle Foundation awarded TREES over $400,000 over the next two years to develop a major reforestation effort in the region of Gonaïves (North of Port-au-Prince).  Gonaïves is one of the poorest and environmentally degraded regions in Haiti.  Over the last decade, hurricanes have led to major flooding in the city and a significant loss of human life.  In addition to improving people’s living standards and bringing life back to an exhausted environment, the trees planted will also help reduce the destruction caused by future flooding.  As soon as possible, TREES is excited to begin working with motivated farmers in communities in Gonaïves.

Burundi Agroforestry and Conflict Resolution Training
On January 29th – 30th, Trees for the Future will be working with Hope for Burundi to facilitate a two-day workshop that covers agroforestry techniques along with conflict resolution training. This workshop is a follow-up to a very successful workshop that Hope for Burundi facilitated in June 2008. 40 community leaders from Makamba, Ruyigi, and Kirundo will be participating in the training.  Each of the participants will be encouraged to establish their own nursery within each of their own communities. We hope that these decentralized nurseries will make it much easier to reach more people and to plant trees in more locations.

Draft Telugu Manual Available for Download
After much work and coordination, a rough draft of the Telugu language agroforestry training manual is ready for download.  Many thanks to Gangisetty and his volunteers and friends that have helped get this manual to where it is.  There is still work to be done, as some new sections have been added that still need to be translated, but it has come a long way.  Please click here to take a look at the draft copy.

Expanding Agroforestry Training Program
Training is an extremely important part of implementing successful projects. Starting from the first English edition that was released in September of 2004, TREES Agroforestry Training Program has expanded to cover French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Telugu, and we hope to finish Tamil, Hindi, Swahili, and Creole in 2010.  TREES recently brought on Catherine Bukowski to help coordinate the training program and to develop new materials to help reach more people around the world.

Catherine graduated from the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry (SUNY-ESF) in 2004 with a MS in Forest and Natural Resource Management.  During 2005 she worked for SUNY-Research Foundation and the non-profit Tropical Forestry Initiative in Costa Rica on demonstration agroforestry projects and tree nursery management. Then, from 2006 to 2009 she served with the U.S. Peace Corps in Honduras.  The first two years she worked with women’s groups on agricultural and tree nursery trainings, helped maintain various tree nurseries with help from Trees for the Future as well as participated in other agricultural and watershed management activities. Her third year she served as a supporting staff member to the Lancetilla Botanical Garden and Research Center where she worked with environmental education in primary schools, organized environmental awareness events and participated in agroforestry training and community tree nurseries.

If you have any questions, or would like to take part in the training program, you can click here for more information, or contact Cathie directly at training@treesftf.org

Update from the Philippines
This is a busy month for us in the Philippines as our tree planting partners TREES Philippines are working steadily to water seedlings during their dry season.  In addition they are meeting with and training new and existing members. We often receive requests from people in the Philippines who have heard about our work and would like to work with us to start tree planting projects of their own. In 2010 we will work with 5 new organizations distributed throughout the Philippines. This will significantly increase awareness of our work and will increase the number of trees we will plant. We appreciate our partners’ assistance in getting seeds and training materials out to all of these groups, and hope that we can reach our goal of planting 2 million trees in the Philippines this planting season.

Gambia - People participate in a community-wide outplanting day in Kerr Ngoryan	Honduras - Don Lauriano Jacobo with two, two year old Calliandra calothyrsus trees planted as nurse trees for banana and coffee	India - Excellent dead-wood protection using prosopis branches in Alwar

Green Valentines Day Gifts
For those of you looking for a green Valentines Day gift, 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.

Cast Your Vote for TREES
From the 1st through the 15th of February Trees for the Future will be participating in the Brighter Planet Project Fund Competition. This is an online competition for a $5,000 grant which “seeks to foster local leadership and seed worthy community projects that will help people fight or adapt to climate change.”

Once we put in our bid it is up to you to help us win it by going to the Brighter Planet website and registering. Registering is quick and easy. Then, vote! You have three votes to use and you can use them all on Trees for the Future!

We hope you’ll be able to support us and we thank you in advance for all of your dedication and hard work for our cause!

TREES 2010 Plan Ready for Download
Our Plan of Action for 2010 is now available for download by clicking here.  It details an ambitious plan to plant over 20 million trees with 1,700 communities in 19 countries.  Please take a look, and help support this important work!  

Business Partnerships
Telecom for Charity solutions has partnered with Trees for Future.  Their new every day is Earth Day promotion is to plant 10 trees on your behalf, with Trees for the Future JUST for talking to them about any business telecom opportunity! Save money on your everyday business telecommunication services and support Trees for the Future monthly @ www.telecomforcharity.org or call 1-888-775-4100 and ask for Jay Frank.

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 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!