Multicultural Cooperation for Fruit Tree Planting

Thanks to your generous support, we had a record planting season this year, 40,000 fruit tree sapplings were planted in Akraich, on the land donated by the Jewish community. This astounding success would have been impossible if not for the committment of the friend's of HAF, our partners, the Jewish community, and our team. 

What's next? 

This week, we completed a well that is 80 meters (about 262 feet) deep in Akraich. We have installed the drip-irrigation systems that will carry the water to the young trees in the nurseries, so that they will come to maturity on target for initial harvesting next year. The new water system will provide water for the local community, and for the nurseries that we've planted on the land of the Jewish community, to ensure that the trees will grow to full maturity, even through the hot, dry summer months. 

HAF is devoted to the sustianabiltiy of our projects, and thanks to your help, we can continue to watch them grow, providing fruit and increasing incomes for years to come. We will share with you the progress with you each step of the way. The 2013 planting season is drawing to a close, but our project has just begun. 

Links:

• HAF's President Speaks
• HAF website

Links:

• Learn more on our website

This is the time of year when HAF prepares projects for the upcoming planting season, which begins with the rains.

Attached are photos of the land lent by the Jewish Community of Marrakech for the fruit tree nursery to be planted at Akraïch.  

As a reminder, after the 2nd and the 5th years, the young trees are transplanted from the nursery to the private orchards of farming families neighboring the site.

We are currently working on another agreement with the Jewish Community in Marrakech in the Ourika Valley of the High Atlas Mountains, in the Al Haouz province.

• Akraich photos 2012.09 (PDF)
  

MAY 2012

Last week an agreement was signed between HAF and the (Moroccan) Jewish Community of Marrakech*, and a pilot project is now in the planning stages. [*In Morocco, a “Jewish Community” is a legal entity, much like a Commune, and it has a president.] 

The project premise is: 

Sprinkled throughout Morocco, Jewish sacred shrines occupy land owned by the local Jewish Communities, and these are often in rural areas. The Jewish Community will lend HAF some arable land adjoining a particular religious shrine for 5 years so that HAF can build a community tree nursery there, training representatives of the neighboring villages in fruit tree arboriculture as they build and maintain the nursery over the 5-year period. At the end of the 2nd and 5th years, young trees will be distributed to the poorer families in the local villages, and the newly-trained cultivators will pass along their knowledge to the other villagers. 

Morocco has had a rich religious history. In the 8th century AD when the Arabs brought Islam to present-day Morocco, Jewish people had already inhabited Morocco since 70 CE, co-existing with the Berber peoples, sharing language and culture. This combined Moroccan Muslim and Jewish community project will be another reminder of this rich shared history and mutual respect.

MARCH 2012

This combined Morocccan Jewish and Muslim Community project is expected to be the first HAF project to take place in the Province of Essaouira, which is a different region, with different soil, less water, a different population, and different challenges in addressing poverty issues. Therefore, we need to identify different solutions.

Because the soil, climate, terrain, and growing conditions are completely different, studies have been underway to identify the trees to plant, suppliers of saplings and to further clarify the technical aspects of the project, even as new partnerships are being developed with local authorities and communities.  

At the same time, because this is to be a pilot project, a lot of careful planning is being put into essentially creating a large, kingdom-wide project, with this as only the first step.

Partnership is always important to the success of development projects, and so we are at the stage of bringing together groups, building trust, and preparing the way for the next steps to come.

Stay tuned ...