Mindanao Biodiversity Project

Dear Friend,

Warm greetings and thank you very much for your generous support to our project improving the biodiversity in Mindanao. Our place is home to so many endangered and endemic plant and animal species and there is a need to improve and protect its biodiversity. We are doing this through education, assistance to farmers and implementing projects like tree growing and protection of trees that are native in the area. The work is tough as people in need of food encroach in the last remaining biodiverse area and we are facing an uphill battle but we are succeeding. This reporting period we are training 15 farmers to produce their own organic fertilizer from waste in the farm. In so doing, they will become sustainable and resilient and not depend on chemical fertilizer that is costly and poison the soil.

Hoping for your continuing support.

Very sincerely yours,

Cesario Sayre

Dear Friend,

Warm greetings and thank you very much for your continuing support to our project improving the biodiversity in our island. There are so many factors that threatened our rich bodiversity and there is a need to promote measures that will improve it with the help and nurturing of local communities for without their assistance, biodiversity programs fail. The alarm now about the negative impact of climate change has been sounded and work on biodiversity improvement needs to be hastened. Local champions is the key for success in managing home-grown programs. This reporting period we promoted the growing of banana as additional crop in the farming system with the banana providing food on a regular basis. We chose the local varieties which grow well and adapted to the area. We were able to convince 200 farmers to plant banana in their farms.

Hoping for your kindness and generosity.

Very sincerely yours,

Cesario

Dear Friend,

Warm greetings and thank you very much for your generosity in supporting our project to improve the biodiversity especially in the upland areas. Threats to biodiversity are multiple and there is an urgent need to enhance and improve our mountains by the growing of trees, protection of the remaining forest and teaching upland farmers how to do this. This reporting period we embarked on educating farmers biodiversity improvement by the growing of mixed trees and cash crops. Programs in the past fail because it focuses only on the growing of trees and farmers complain that they need to eat also and plant food crops. We were able to start a small model farm using this model and train a total of 22 neighboring farmers. We will continue to do this and hope that this will become a learning site in this area.

Hoping for your continuing support.

Very sincerely yours,

Cesario Sayre

Dear Friend,

Warm greetings and thank you very much for your generous support to our project improving the biodiversity of our island. Mindanao is one of the very diverse area in the world and the problem is that the multiple problems of poverty, lack of land and lack of productive resources has impacted negatively on the land and natural resources. Some well-meaning program on biodiversity improvement focused on tree planting alone without taking into consideration the livelihood of poor farmers. They need to eat in order to grow more trees and in order to protect their environment. Thus this reporting period we provided assistance to 75 farmers so that they are able to grow their own food in their land. In so doing they will be able to practice biodiversity improvement by also raising tree seedlings and planting them. We will be providing them with fruit and timber tree seeds that they can grow and these will be included in our next report.

Thank you very much.

Very sincerely yours,

Cesario

Dear Friend,

Warm greetings and thank you very much for your generous support to our project improving the biodiversity in our island. Biodiversity here is being threatened by farmers going up the hillsides to farm precarious hills. Without proper tree cover the hills erode and will expose stones and unfertile bedrock resulting to loss of biodiversity. When forestland becomes barren, regenerating them will take centuries and this is no longer practical and economical. The need to reforest especially with indigenous tree species in urgent. This reporting period, we are happy to partner with a local cement firm which provided us with tree seedlings we can use in our tree planting activities. We are able to source out a total of 15,000 seedlings of different tree species and we use our funds from the GlobalGiving for logistics, admin and training support.  Hoping for your continuing support to our project.

Very sincerely yours,

Cesario