Improving lives with value added wood, Costa Rica

Amidst COVID, We Continue to Plant Trees

This report is sent in times of the COVID 19 pandemic. Costa Rica has had a very careful and responsible approach to the emergency, implementing a lockdown on non-essential activities, while quickly building up our medical facilities to be able to; on one hand, flatten the curve, and on the other, be ready to attend the cases we would have. Fortunately, Costa Rica is the Latin American country with the lowest mortality rate, where only 7 people have died from COVID, even though we have had 792 people ill.

This has affected our organization, of course, slowing down some of our activities such as visiting farms- yet others we have to continue, such as caring for the tree nursery and also, assuring the farmers have their trees as soon as they are ready. 

While all this happens, we have not ceased to look for new opportunities, to sell value-added wood. For example, recently we were contacted by a buyer from San José (our capital), who was eager to commit to purchasing dry wood.

Meanwhile, at a national level, a new National Forestry Plan is being devised, hopefully,   to formulate strategies that will open the doors to organizations like ASIREA,  that desperately need to find economically viable options for farmers who invest in tree planting on their farms.

So we continue to save up for our wood dryer. The good news is that- little by little, together we have achieved 30% of our goal, with $5535  donated out of $17,265 that we need! Thank you for your support with this project and we hope you can continue contributing and sharing this project with others. The truth is that being able to add value to wood will always be an important option to stimulate the local economy through conservation.