Dear wonderful donors,
Greetings from the rainy rainforest where everything is a riot of blossom in the most brilliant colors imaginable – purple, yellow and more shades of green than you can imagine!
And a big thank you for all your generous donations! They are the secret sauce that encourages us to jump out of bed and get to work – in the forest nursery, out on the planting sites, in the office, wherever we may be, as we make sure that the Forests4Water program is as good as we can possibly make it.
And while we’re on the subject, we want to give a special shoutout to our regular donors who stand with us month after month, rain or shine. Iracambi visitors, students, directors, global change makers and friends old and new – thank you, you are the best!
The end of the planting season brings renewed focus on monitoring and maintenance. We told you, didn’t we, that tree planting is a year round activity? So while we’re checking on seedlings that were planted over the past four months, replanting where necessary, we’re also collecting and uploading data to our GIS platform. You can check our maps page to learn more! Open the page. and click one one of the property icons to see what has been recorded about that particular property.
It's a work in progress, and we’re determined to perfect our data collection and management, so that we can continually improve our program, and so that you, dear donors, can see the amazing impact that we are making together.
And, in the meantime, our 2021 planning is almost, almost complete. We’re fine tuning the budget, getting ready to hire extra staff, and then we’ll be able to get started on upgrading the nursery. This will involve clearing a new area just across from the existing nursery, building dozens more seedling tables, erecting shade, and expanding our irrigation system.
Plus we’re hard at work making new seedlings to be planted during the next rainy season (November through February.) The work of the nursery team is never done. And we love it that way. (Well, most of the time we do!)
Look after yourselves, wherever you are in the world, and thank you for your amazing support.
And to those of you in colder climes, we send warm rainforest love from
Alfredo and the Iracambi team
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Dear donors and friends across the world,
Greetings from a thoroughly wet, muddy rainforest! Not perfect for people, perhaps, but GREAT for baby trees – more especially since the last couple of weeks were extra hot and sunny. To the point that we were beginning to worry about the trees, we planted in early January.
But it's amazing how they perk up when the rain comes back! And us? We pull on our boots and press on! We’re completing this season’s planting, (and delighted to have a handful of local volunteers to help out.) We’re collecting planting and site data for our records, making new seedlings, and adding the final touches to our planning and budgeting for the 2021-22 planting season.
But we have to stop right there and tell you the most extraordinary and wonderful piece of news.
To give you a bit of background. January is high summer down here in Brazil. It's also right in the middle of the planting season. And after the flood of generous donations that come in towards the end of the year, it's often a time when we have to tighten our belts. A época das vacas magras - as they say in these parts. The time of thin cows.
But this year it was different. Can you believe that this year, in January alone, we received over two hundred donations from across the world? Yes, there's a lot going on what with covid 19 and economic hardship and lockdown, but, because of each one of you, dear donors, we now have a solid base to expand our forestry program in 2021-22. We can't thank you enough - we are truly humbled by your generosity, and we really can see that we go farther together.
And before I close, here are some photos from our most recent planting sites As you can see, we’re working on steep mountain slopes, and it’s challenging. But it keeps us super fit and at the end of the day we have no trouble sleeping!
Look after yourselves, guys. It really does look like better times are coming...
big rainforest love, and thank you for everything that you do. We'll talk soon,
Alfredo and the Iracambi Tree Planters
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Dear donors and friends across the world,
Greetings from Iracambi! We hope you are taking care of yourselves, doing well, and having as much fun as we are in making plans for 2021?
In our last letter we talked about the UN Decade of Ecosystem Restoration and we gave you a sneak peek at Iracambi’s contribution towards it: we’re going to plant more trees. A lot more trees!
So here’s the deal. Right now we’re finishing up this season’s planting. We’re lucky enough to have some volunteers onsite who have come from different parts of Brazil to help, so our planting team is out there in the field planting the last 1000 seedlings of the season.
And, thanks to your magnificent support, we’re also deep into planning for the 2021-22 season.
A quick recap. We’re locating land to reforest, seedlings to plant, and manpower.
First things first. We have more than enough land to plant. Hooray, hooray! We’ve also located subsidiary sources of seedlings, but we really want to increase the capacity in our own nursery. That will involve hiring more staff, enlarging the nursery area (happily we have lots of space) and completing our detailed budgeting and planning.
So that’s where we are right now. And here’s where we need to give a big shoutout to two very special people. The first is our forestry mentor who inspired us to take a great step forward by committing to an ambitious, achievable goal that excites us! Like all good mentors, he’s helping us think though exactly how to get from where we are to where we want to be in the simplest way possible.
The second very special person is a long-time friend and colleague with considerable experience in large scale reforestry. He walked us through every part of the process, soup to nuts, and generously shared innumerable practical tips on the best ways of getting those trees into the ground and maintaining them until they are thoroughly well established.
One of the exciting things that we’ve learned is the truth of the old African saying “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” And our community is expanding exponentially! It seems that once you take the decision to scale up, the resources you need show up. So we're welcoming, celebrating and collaborating with our partners everywhere: team members, mentors, practitioners, volunteers, students, schoolkids, community members, and, of course, YOU, dear donors!
Thanks to your very generous support, together we’re going faster and farther towards our exciting goal of restoring the beautiful Atlantic Forest. Stay tuned for further developments!
with much rainforest love,
The Iracambi Tree Planters
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Dear donors,
Did you know that we are just entering the UN Decade of Ecosystem Restoration?!
So what could be better than to wish that 2021 brings us all new hope, health and happiness? And, before we go any further, we want to send you all a great big thank you for your amazing support over this past year.
Next, we want to share a message received today from a new donor. "Climate change is the existential threat of our times and the rainforests of Brazil are the lungs of the world; (we) wanted to support a great and effective local cause with a huge global impact. Thank you so much for all your hard work, Iracambi!"
All we can say is that without all of you, dear donors, we'd never have made it this far!
And now for some exciting news. We’re unrolling some ambitious plans for 2021 and, as our friends, allies and supporters, we want you to be the first to know!
First of all, we’re committing to the UN Decade of Ecosystem Restoration and planning to plant a lot more trees this year, (ten thousand at the very least and hopefully a lot more.) If we are to keep within the limits of 1.5-2C temperature rise and avoid climate catastrophe, there is no time to waste.
We've set ourselves an ambitious goal and we’re going to need your help!
And, in order to up our game considerably, there are four things we need to put in place. We need to find land suitable for reforestation, seedlings, manpower and equipment.
Let’s start with the land. As you may remember, we live in the buffer zone of the Serra do Brigadeiro State Park which is one of the most important biodiversity conservation areas in the state. We’ve located a series of priority reforestation areas on contiguous properties bordering the Park, whose owners are keen to reforest. Reforesting these properties will enable us to restore and extend an important ecological corridor: good for the farmers, good for wildlife, and great for protecting and recuperating water resources.
Next, we’ll increase production in our forest nursery, as well as locating other sources of healthy young saplings for planting. We’re already working with local farmers on setting up small tree nurseries on their properties, and there are also several commercial nurseries in the area that can provide high quality seedlings.
Since we live in an area of family farms where the main crop is coffee, and since the cycle of coffee and the cycle of tree planting happen at different times of the year, it’s not difficult for us to find seasonal manpower during the planting season.
Next, we need to acquire a reliable form of transport to move tree seedlings and tree planting teams onto tree planting sites. (Smaller items of equipment such as strimmers and hole diggers are also on our wishlist of equipment.)
And lastly, we need to include education into every part of our program: informal education with farm families and visitors, and a continuation of our education programs with local schools and online. In addition, we need to redouble our efforts at raising awareness both at local and municipal levels where we participate in community groups and councils. Finally, we look forward to reopening our doors to students and researchers as soon as it is safe to do so!
With that in mind, we’d like to consolidate our forestry programs on GlobalGiving: folding them into one, whose mission, as part of the UN Decade of Ecosystem Restoration, is to restore a healthy forest ecosystem that includes all human and non-human inhabitants of this section of Atlantic Rainforest! We'll let you know when we're ready to consolidate the programs, we just wanted to give you a headsup.
Will you join us in this exciting program? Our team can't wait to see what we can achieve with your support.
Thank you so much, please stay safe, and here’s to restoring the beautiful Atlantic Forest together, so that people everywhere can breathe a little more easily!
With rainforest love from Alfredo and the entire Iracambi team
PS We’re also planning to extend our program of forest monitoring, setting up a monitoring protocol that can be used in ecosystem restoration efforts anywhere in the world. More on that later!
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Hey there, lovely donors!
I bet you’re as ready to say goodbye to 2020 as we are down here in the rainforest?
But before we go, we want to share some amazing news. Thanks to you all, we’ve almost made our 2021 budget, and if you’re able to help us nail it, we’ll be forever grateful!
And here is a tip from the taxman.
If you are a US tax payer, this year the IRS is allowing you to make non itemized tax deductible donations of up to $300 to non-profits before midnight on 12/31! You can, of course, also make larger, itemized donations.
UK tax payers can also qualify for tax relief – don’t forget to check the GiftAid box on the donation page!
Europeans, Australians, Canadians, Asians, Africans and South Americans, we’re sorry to say, don’t appear to get any tax relief. Just a warm feeling from knowing you’ve done your part to save the rainforest.
And just to let you know, we rounded out the year by planting as many seedlings as we could (nearly 4000) before taking a short break, and we’ll be back on the job at the beginning of January to plant a further 2000.
It’s still raining hard – in fact those of us who hadn’t run off to the beach spent much of Christmas without either power or internet – although, to be fair, both were restored halfway through Christmas Day. So it was a traditional candlelit Christmas, and, in the forest nursery, the seedlings are absolutely loving the rain.
And, as we look back at 2020 the first thing to say is that we are totally humbled by your generosity. Although we never completely despaired, there were times in the year when we seriously wondered how we were going to make it through. .
Like you, we learned to live with uncertainty. We learned to pivot and adapt. We learned to rely on one another. And the most important thing we discovered?
That we’re all in this together, and that together we’ll make it through.
Goodbye, 2020. Goodbye, dear donors. Stay safe, and we’ll see you in 2021. May it bring us all new hope, new life, and renewed courage.
With much love from the whole Iracambi community.
PS We’ll unveil our 2021 plans in our next letter!
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