Fruit trees for Peruvian Amazon families

Hola friends,

In celebration of Earth Day and Arbor Day, FTPF is excited to announce we will be returning to the Peruvian Amazon in 2021 to plant fruit trees with families and farmers!

The region has been deeply affected by the hardships of the past year, and therefore we are really thrilled to be launching a 2021 planting campaign. Although we are still in the planning stages, we will likely be in the field in November-December, when our expert team will plant thousands of new trees, as well as collect data and perform aftercare on those already planted and distributed along the Amazon and Napo rivers.

This year is also exciting as we will begin to see the fruits of our labor (pun intended!) as many of the previously planted trees will be starting to bear fruit. For updates from the field and to see your generosity in action, follow FTPF on our Facebook and Instagram.

Gratefully,

The FTPF Team

PS: Depending on the situation in Peru regarding the pandemic and current health guidelines, FTPF may be welcoming volunteers to join us on the ground again this year. If you are interested, please fill out the form on our website. Gracias!

Dear friends,

We hope this letter finds you healthy and happy this holiday season. In a year full of hardships for so many, we write with a hopeful glimpse into what we like to call the “fruiture.” A time at our project locations where the air is clean, birds sing from the branches overhead, and families harvest life-sustaining, income-generating fruit from the bountiful trees all around them. A place where students grow up fascinated by nature as they witness thriving ecosystems alive in their schoolyard orchards and vow to become staunch protectors of the environment. Where communities gather safely, away from life’s everyday stresses, to be surrounded by the magic of fruit trees and a collective effort to improve food access for all. This is the “fruiture” we dream of—and it is one we see coming to life in FTPF’s thousands of orchards around the world.

This vision has a special way of bringing communities together—and in some cases entire kingdoms—through a shared sense of hope for what a newly-planted orchard will become in just a few short years. We’d like to share one such story from our ongoing project in Uganda, where we’ve established a local partner nursery to grow our own saplings using earth-friendly practices. Last year, after hearing about our tree planting program, His Royal Highness the Chief of Butembe Chiefdom invited the FTPF team to plant trees on the royal grounds for his citizens. After first meeting with chiefdom officials, we went outside, to hold a workshop and get our hands dirty planting trees near the palace.

The chief took notice and immediately summoned one of our team members, Edward Paul Munaaba (pictured), who is also a leading climate change educator in the region. He asked Edward what we expected in return for planting and distributing tens of thousands of fruit trees to families throughout the region along with providing training in proper tree maintenance. Edward responded that we only ask participating families, schools, and public officers for a promise to care for their trees to ensure survival—and to share harvests with others in need. The chief was so impressed with our mission that he stated he wanted someone like Edward in his cabinet and soon after appointed him as the new prime minister of Butembe!

With the honorable prime minister on our team promoting more tree plantings than ever, we were able to expand our programs and overall outreach this year. We are excited to report that we planted and distributed 96,075 fruit trees around the world in 2020. We also developed an exciting first-of-its-kind initiative to create the world’s first peaceful, fruitful border by planting mango trees around the perimeter of the Butembe Chiefdom. This mango border project, launching in April 2021, will create a place that offers abundance, sharing, and goodwill to neighboring chiefdoms.

Along the way to this season’s planting totals, we were excited to receive updates from previous plantings where trees are now providing thousands of pounds of fruit for communities and schools. Every year, we share a couple of these stories so you can see exactly how you are making a difference each and every time you support our work (many more examples can be found on our social media sites throughout the year).

Orchard update – In Cleveland, Ohio, harvests from Vel’s Purple Oasis are used in classes to teach kids how to cook with and enjoy fresh fruit. Vel Scott, namesake and vice president of the nonprofit garden, wants neighborhood children to think of the orchard as their own, especially in their urban area with limited access to green spaces. This approach has led to a thriving garden that produces 60 pounds of fruit per tree each year! Vel wrote to us: “A fruit orchard … in the middle of a struggling neighborhood that provides fresh, organic, delicious food for us; and it’s all free. Now we know, ‘You don't have to be wealthy to eat healthy.’ We love it!!”

Orchard update – From the ICP Orlando Food Pantry, Etnairis Polanco reports: “In a time of great stress due to Covid 19, our community loves the fact that they are able to enjoy the outdoors safely while taking care of the trees, and hand picking their own fresh fruits. It has been a great mental exercise for the families in our community.”

We often remind volunteers who join us for planting events that once we plant trees together, we are friends for life. We know this is true for those who support our programs in other ways as well, including our donors, who make all this work possible in the first place. We are so very grateful to have you as a friend for life and hope you’ll consider contributing by year’s end to our upcoming projects so we can make the Ugandan fruitful border and so many other groundbreaking projects a reality. Please donate today knowing that for the tenth year in a row, more than 90 cents of every dollar contributed was used in our life-sustaining tree planting programs.

For a greener, cleaner, healthier planet,

Cem Akin, TreeEO & Co-creator

Hunger, malnutrition, poverty, and environmental degradation in the Peruvian Amazon are hurting local families. Fruit trees provide perennial sources of nutrition, income, and environmental benefits that will help these families now and for decades to come. As Michele Briceño, a member of our local team born and raised in nearby Iquitos told FTPF during our trip to the region in late 2019:

“In my humble opinion, I am sure that the parents believe from the bottom of their hearts that this project will create a better future for their children through sustainable agriculture that does not take away from their lands, their customs, and that allows them to live in harmony with the environment.”

Please consider making a donation or sharing this project with your friends and family so we can continue to support sustainable livelihoods for local families in the Peruvian Amazon!

Dear friends,

We wanted to give you a quick update on FTPF's project in Peru, especially in light of the unprecedented circumstances COVID19 has brought to the Loreto region and its capital of Iquitos, which has been hit very hard by the coronavirus due in large part to the fact that the city is surrounded by vast jungle and the only way to deliver much needed medical supplies and other essentials is by air or by boat.

Food security at these times is as important as ever, and we wanted to let you know we are still working hard to fight for sustainable nutrition for low-income, rural families in Loreto through our fruit tree planting and distribution programs. We are working with our partners at CONAPAC to continue growing a wide variety of fruit-bearing trees and native plants to be planted and distributed in early 2021.

There is so much uncertainly in the world right now, but we take some solace in the fact that over 12,000 trees are already growing as part of this project in communities along the Napo and Amazon Rivers, serving as an important step towards food and economic security. If you are able to make a contribution to support this work, we would be very grateful; if not, you can show your support of FTPF during these times by sharing this fundraiser with your friends and family or on social media.

Have a very happy Memorial Day and stay safe!

“These thousands of fruit trees are reforesting areas of the rainforest in a time when the entire world is feeling deeply concerned for deforestation, and it’s being done in the right way."

As Brian Landever, Director of our in-country partner CONAPAC, says above, FTPF's work is in the Peruvian Amazon is critical in combating deforestation while at the same time providing income, nutrition, and training to families in rural river communities.

During our visit, FTPF staff and volunteers worked together with our partners and more than 300 community volunteers and students to plant 450 trees at schools and in public spaces, as well as distribute trees directly to families. Everyone we worked with was incredibly grateful, hardworking, and extremely committed to reforesting their communities with fruit trees. Not a day went by during our trip that FTPF was not thanked for the gift of these trees, and this gratitude was evident in the way the trees were cared for from the moment they were put in the ground. 

Thank you for supporting this project and believing in the power of fruit trees to create a more fruitful, verdant, and just world for Amazon families in Peru!