Health, Sanitation and Food Security Project

This reporting period we expanded our tree growing activities by making additional seedling nurseries and clearing-up new areas for tree planting. Twenty eight local farmers participated in the tree planting after they realized the economic value of trees and the possibility that the trees will control soil erosion in their farms. Soil erosion and the loss of top soil due to lack of roots of trees to hold it is one of the main problems in mountain areas here. The planted trees are fertilized with organic fertilizer coming from the waste collected in the ecosan or dry toilets that we have implemented. The farmers themselves build their dry toilets from local materials and then use this to fertilize their fields. This is indeed an innovative idea given that commercial fertilizers nowadays are very expensive and that poor farmers cannot afford it. Neighboring farmers are very interested to implement similar initiatives in their own farms and we have a lot of request for assistance. 

This reporting period also, our initiative is given a big boost with the participation of Holcim - Philippines in providing additional timber and fruit tree seedlings for our tree growing activities. They provided a total of 16,500 seedlings and all these have been planted already.