Forests For Haiti

FORESTS FOR HAITI PROJECT TRAINS IMPOVERISHED COMMUNITY TO BUILD AND MAINTAIN TREE NURSERY IN HAITI IN JUNE 2011

Forests for Haiti : In June 2011, José Luis Alvarez, the head of LCHPP’s Mexican project, traveled to Haiti with another expert forester, Javier Hinojosa, to set up Forests for Haiti’s first nursery in collaboration with The Haitian People’s Support Project, Inc. HPSP. This almost impossible mission of establishing a nursery was accomplished during the course of two weeks under the most difficult and challenging circumstances. The 200,000 trees planted were from locally collected seeds and some have added nutritional and medicinal value.

We are pleased to report that the nursery is doing well 7 months later and that many other groups are helping to make this project a success, including the Haitian People’s Support Project, the Tzu Chi Buddhist Humanitarian Organization, Food for the Poor, agronomy students and others. The whole community is involved.

The challenges are many. Bois Neuf is a very poor community that we hope to help become economically stable. José Luis is now introducing a solar dehydrator and recycled packaging so that the leaves if the various trees, including the nutritional and medicinal tree, Moringa, can be packaged and sold.

Our goal is to help the people of Haiti reforest their own country by helping to establish community nurseries and conducting educational workshops on the care and maintenance of a nursery, forest management techniques, and value added uses of their new trees.

This could help the people create a dependable source of income and bring economic and environmental stability to a place so negatively impacted by deforestation through the centuries.