Olá dear donors!
How are you doing in these crazy last weeks of this crazy year? It’s certainly been a wild ride, but we’re still here, and we absolutely wouldn’t be if it wasn’t for our wonderful supporters and donors from around the world! So we want to send a great big thank you to all of you.
We couldn’t do it without you.
It’s so exciting to see that the spirit of Giving Tuesday lives on throughout the month, and we can’t begin to tell you how grateful we are for your continued support. So here’s a quick catchup of what’s going on down in the rainforest at Iracambi.
First and foremost, it’s raining. It’s raining a lot. Which is perfect weather for tree planting. (Yes, we may get a little wet, we may have a few minor mishaps – when did you last get a flat tire on a muddy road and end up looking and feeling like a mud wrestler?) But, once we’ve washed the mud off we sleep soundly at night!
And so far we’ve planted 3,800 trees. Yaay! Check out our pictures and see if you can get a taste of life during the planting season.
We also have some exciting news we’d love to share with you. We’ve been challenged to up our game by a lot. (Like five or ten times….) Stay tuned and we’ll let you in on the secret as things develop.
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Olá, dear donors!
Today’s the day! It’s Giving Tuesday! How exciting is that? We all finally get the chance to give back!
Reach out to someone - even if it's virtually or on the phone. Donate supplies to someone in need. Say a big thank you to a frontline worker, give someone a surprise gift. Support a cause you believe in. Donate to your favorite non profit. Whatever you do to make the world a little brighter, today's the day!
A quick reminder that Giving Tuesday starts today, December 1st at 00.00.00 ET and runs through 23:59:59 ET on December 1st. So wherever we are in the world, we’ll all be able to make our donations during daylight hours.
And here's an amazing bonus. This year, GlobalGiving has an incentive fund of ONE MILLION DOLLARS to be divided proportionately among all GlobalGiving partners, according to the amount they raise. So each organization will get a share of the pot, and the money will be allocated at the end of the day. (Which means that we don’t have to worry about matching funds running out before some of us in far flung corners of the world are even out of bed.)
Last year Iracambi raised $11,617 on Giving Tuesday and this year we’re aiming to do even better. So please, if you can, donate to this project and help us Save more Forests and Change more Lives! And please post on your social media and alert all colleagues, friends and family and let’s see if we can make this that best Giving Tuesday ever, OK?
We can’t tell you how grateful we are for your support – this has been a challenging year for us all. Here at Iracambi we had to close the Center to our students, with the result that our income was reduced by almost one third. In fact, if it hadn't been for you, our generous donors, we might have had to close our doors. So we're giving thanks for you all!
Sending lots of rainforest love and a big virtual hug from
The Iracambi team
PS It's been raining hard all week and we're over our heads in tree planting. We'll tell you more in our next update. In the meantime enjoy Giving Tuesday!
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Dear Forest Guardians,
Greetings from the rainforest and we hope you are staying safe? Tough times continue, but one day they will pass, and the trees that you helped us plant will be flourishing. Thank you, dear donors, for that! And we want to send a special thank you to all our new donors this month. A big welcome to you all, and we are so happy to have you on board. You're all invited to visit us one day when you can. Your hammocks await!
Before we go any further we have an important announcement. Giving Tuesday December 1st is coming soon and we’d love to invite you to join us. This year GlobalGiving has a million dollars in matching funds, so just think how far that will stretch your donation, and how many trees that will help us to plant! Please alert all colleagues, family and friends and let’s make this the best Giving Tuesday ever!
So what’s new from Forests4Water? Well first and foremost, the planting season is upon us. And today a group of Iracambi foresters is off visiting some of the local farms to make sure that the ground is cleared, the holes are dug and fertilized and ready for the young trees.
It’s been raining hard, and as usual that means that it’s hard to follow the sort of chronogram that we’d like in a perfect world – life isn’t quite that easy in the rainforest! We’re at the beginning of the rainy season and the rains are heavy and frequently accompanied by lightning storms. This means that many of the roads become temporarily impassable and we have short-term interruptions to both power and the internet, making communications virtually impossible. (And did I tell you the cell phone service here is precarious at best?) So you can see that coordinating transport and manpower to coincide with a day when the weather and the roads are collaborating and the farmers are available, all requires considerable flexibility, not to mention a sense of humor!
But it’s all good – the trees are all separated in the nursery, we have a record of which farmers want which trees, and we’re also working with the first three farm families who are interested in setting up their own forest nurseries. Interestingly, some families that had previously moved into the local small town to have easier access to schools and health facilities, are moving back onto their farms and are happy to be able to involve their children in activities such as forest nurseries!
So we’ll tell you more in our next letter, and in the meantime please take care of yourselves, and so many thanks for your support. Together we’re building the forests of the future!
with rainforest love,
Alfredo and Deivid
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Dear Forest Guardians,
Greetings from the rainforest and we hope you are staying safe. These are tough times, but one day they will pass, and the trees that you helped us plant will be flourishing. What a comforting thought!
In our last letter, we told you that the rains have arrived and that means that our forestry work is full-on! And because the rains have just recently arrived, we're still singing and not yet grumbling!
Down in the nursery, we’re collecting seeds like crazy, identifying them, germinating them, and thinking about next year's forests. At the same time, we’re preparing this year’s planting and separating out the seedlings that are ready to be planted out. It’s always a bit of a shock for them to be thrown out into the big world, without the tender loving care to which they’ve become accustomed, so we’re starting the process of hardening them off.
Many of them will be planted on areas of degraded pasture, so we need to select species that can better tolerate sunlight, as well as a mixture of pioneer and climax species. Others will be planted in boggy areas so they need to able to tolerate having their feet wet (as it were!).
We’ve already started preliminary visits to the farms where we'll be reforesting, and we’re thrilled to report that in some cases we’ll be working in areas contiguous to secondary forests so that we’ll be creating and extending forest corridors. Great to extend the forest fragments and great to create corridors for habitat – this is exactly one of our main forest restoration goals.
And, one more thing. This year, because of covid19, we don’t have our usual resident crew of overseas students and volunteers. So we’re inviting local volunteers to join us for any period from a week to a month, to get involved in one of our best-loved activities. (All activities take place outdoors, and we'll be complying with local directives: being socially distanced and wearing masks.) Not only is tree planting a lot of fun, (yes, and a lot of hard work!) but it’s a great learning experience and a great way to make new friends. We’re just opening up volunteer opportunities, and so far we have a lot of interest.
So we’ll sign off here, and in our next letter, we’ll tell you how our volunteer recruitment program is going. And we’ll also catch you up on our new initiative of setting up individual nurseries on individual farms.
Please take care of yourselves, and so many thanks for your support. Together we’re building the forests of the future!
With rainforest love from
Deivid and Alfredo (and Arielle, who, as we told you, just can’t stay away from the forestry programs!)
PS We wanted to just give you a quick heads up. One of the trees we'll be planting near the Center is in memory of one of our much loved Iracambistas. So, if you'd like us to plant a tree for a new baby, a birthday present, or in honor of someone special, please let us know!
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Dear Forest Guardians,
Greetings from the rainforest and we hope you are doing well?
Our big news is that the rains have come! It's spring time, everything is turning green and flowering, there's a wonderful scent of wet earth and the evening chorus of the frogs is practically deafening.
And I bet you'd like to know what's going on here at Iracambi!
Remember we told you we have a new coordinator – Alfredo? Well, he’s been working hard alongside Deivid in the nursery and learning about the different varieties of seedlings. Both guys have been spending time in the forest collecting seeds, since it’s the perfect time of year to do that. And they’re making seedlings as fast as they can.
All that on top of the regular nursery work: making compost, weeding the seed beds, and of course the watering. (Although it’s a whole lot easier now that the rains are settling in.)
And we do have an exciting new activity in the works. We’re starting to talk to some of the local farmers about the possibility of setting up small forest nurseries on their farms. (To date we've been donating trees from our own nursery, but we want to show them how easy it is to do, and encourage them to think of having a small tree nursery - maybe in their vegetable garden - as part of the farm economy.) We’re focusing on families with children so that we can include environmental education as part of the package. Since the kids are out of school due to the lockdown, this is a great moment for us to combine our two passions: reforestry and education.
By the time we next write, we should have some red hot news on that front and we’ll be sure to let you know!
One more thing before we go. Would you be able to share the link to our project on your social media? https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/forests-4-water/ We’re just starting a big funding drive and we’d love to find more monthly donors. (Sneak peek, we're calling them Humming Birds and we've got some surprises in store.)
Talk soon, take care of yourselves, and THANK YOU for your generous donations!
rainforest love,
Alfredo, Arielle and Deivid
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