Category: JoinTrees

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Many of us in North America do not rely on wood for cooking or shade trees for cooling. In contrast, millions in the Global South depend on trees for life-saving shade, livestock fodder, cooking fuel, and building materials. As deforestation continues worldwide, people and the environment suffer.

Mennonite Men is committed to addressing deforestation and caring for God’s creation. Historically, our JoinTrees grants funded projects in the U.S. and Canada, but we now support initiatives in Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Angola, Benin, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). These projects help mitigate climate change by planting trees that absorb carbon dioxide. We are also evaluating how to support tree planting for firewood alternatives, recognizing the complexities of deforestation globally.

A recent news report on violence in DRC led me to reconnect with Ndunge Sefu, a seminary friend, for insights. Ndunge and his wife, Micheline Ilonga, who have lived in DRC and other African countries, offered valuable perspectives. They expressed gratitude that the world is beginning to notice DRC’s struggles, but as Ndunge noted, ‘If an issue doesn’t touch the interests of superpowers, the world doesn’t hear about it.’

The eastern DRC faces severe violence, with tens of thousands dying monthly due to armed rebel groups. Over 120 rebel factions operate there, many profiting from ‘mineral wars’ over coltan, a metal vital for electronic devices. These conflicts result in child labor, environmental devastation, and human suffering. People flee violence, trees are burned, and forests are depleted as displaced communities seek firewood.

Wildlife also suffers. Unique species like the okapi and mountain gorilla are vanishing due to habitat destruction. ‘War affects nature, too,’ Micheline said. Even in areas without conflict, people cut trees for firewood without replanting due to a lack of awareness. ‘You can plant a tree. This side of the conversation is missing.’

The discussion turned to solutions. Micheline asked, ‘How can you think about trees when you have an empty stomach?’

Ndunge suggested, ‘People can farm trees instead of cutting indigenous forests.’ Micheline added, ‘Many women farm in Congo. Growing fruit trees can provide them with income. The land is fertile, and trees will grow.’

This conversation reinforced our commitment to tree-planting initiatives in DRC and Angola. Supporting our African brothers and sisters in these efforts is part of our call to love our neighbors and participate in Christ’s mission of reconciliation.

To date, Mennonite Men has only provided half the funding needed for these projects. We need financial support to complete them. These efforts create livelihoods, inspire communities, and offer sustainable alternatives to deforestation while providing ecological benefits.

Join us in planting hope by supporting these tree-planting projects in DRC and Angola. Your contributions will help restore forests, empower communities, and protect creation for future generations.

To learn more about JoinTrees projects and how you, your company, your men’s group, or your congregation can get involved, visit mennonitemen.org/jointrees.

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Forestry runs in my family. As a second-generation forester in Kansas, my father served as an Extension forester at the Fort Hays Experiment Station. Dad helped farmers plant and care for windbreaks. He worked with towns and communities when Dutch elm disease arrived in ’57 killing thousands of American elms. My spouse Melissa Atchison also has a forestry degree, and after raising kids and attending the Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary, she now serves as pastor of Manhattan Mennonite Church. Faith and forestry find common ground in our family.

I spent most of my career working for the Kansas Forest Service at Kansas State University, in Manhattan. Like my father, I worked with Kansas farmers and landowners interested in planting and caring for trees. These were usually people who genuinely cared for God’s creation and literally sowed the seed or planted the trees that benefit the next generation.

During my career I have seen the value of planting trees in the Great Plains come into question. Woody encroachment into grasslands of eastern red cedar, and honey locust both indigenous to Kansas, and other non-native trees, threaten our precious grasslands and the wildlife that require prairie to survive. Even so, I continue to advocate for agroforestry and forestry in Kansas and here’s why: trees continue to provide the same important benefits they have always provided to Kansans and woody encroachment is a land management issue that will always need to be addressed. Eastern Kansas is what ecologists describe as an ecotone, where the central hardwood forests of the United States transition into the tallgrass prairies. Historically there has always been changes in vegetative types in this transitional zone.

Kansas trees provide wildlife habitat to threatened and endangered species, and without them the American Bald Eagle would still be listed. They reduce streambank erosion improving water quality and slowing the sedimentation of our water supply reservoirs. Trees add to the quality of life providing shade and wind protection to our homes. They sequester carbon, add beauty to our landscape with spring and fall colors, and turn carbon dioxide into the oxygen we breathe. Trees provide value even to a prairie state, but they must be managed and contained to appropriate landscapes.

During my forestry career, tree planting often served as an act of prayer for me. I remember times when I sang hymns while sowing oak seed in early spring. God invites us to sow the seeds of the kindom on this good earth and to take joy in the gifts it yields. When we plant trees thoughtfully, we show respect and gratitude for the creation God has given us, and love to the generations that follow.

My interest in tree planting and forestry have now connected with another issue where I try to practice my Anabaptist faith: peace and justice in Israel and Palestine. Working to seek peace and understand the violence in Israel and Palestine became important to me after participating in a Christian Peacemaker Team delegation to the West Bank in 1998. Since that time I have worked on the issue in a variety of ways and currently chair the Mennonite Palestine Israel Network (MennoPIN), serve on the Steering Committee for Mennonite Action and chair the Western District Conference Task Force on Israel Palestine.

In Palestine, olive trees symbolize Palestinian identity, resilience, and most importantly connection to their land. They are an important source of income and food for many Palestinian families. Olive trees represent Palestinian resilience because of their ability to grow in poor soil conditions, survive droughts, and in some cases produce fruit for thousands of years. For these reasons and the expansion of Israeli settlements, the destruction of olive trees has been a common experience in the West Bank and Gaza. According to the Applied Research Institute in Jerusalem, 800,000 olive trees have been destroyed by Israeli Settlers and the Israeli army since 1967.

Tree planting can indeed be an act of peace and there are many excellent tree planting initiatives to consider supporting. The Mennonite Palestine Israel Network (MennoPIN) and Mennonite Men’s JoinTrees initiative are working collaboratively to plant olive trees in Palestine. The JoinTrees campaign has a goal to plant one million trees by 2030, targeting climate change. Their goals include mitigating global warming, resilient ecosystems, preserving biodiversity and supporting vulnerable communities.

There are a variety of ways to participate in the JoinTrees initiative. For more information check out their web site at https://mennonitemen.org/jointrees or call them at 574-202-0048.

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In the last decades, deforestation, monoculture, and large corporate agriculture interests have devastated native landscapes and dried up watersheds for local small-scale farmers in Tlaxcala, Mexico. Maguey, a traditional feature of Mexican landscapes, has been cleared from ecosystems, seriously affecting local biodiversity. In response to this, the Vicente Guerrero group is supporting communities in Tlaxcala to restore their ecosystems, as well as mitigate and adapt to the changing climate patterns which are already impacting livelihoods.

The Vicente Guerrero group is a small NGO with national and international reach. With forty years of experience spearheading agro-ecological techniques to support food security and sustainability, their newest challenge is restoring local biodiversity and adapting to the climate crisis. Their innovative approach is to focus on recovering ancestral agricultural practices and encouraging community members to become custodians of their lands.

Farmers in Tlaxcala need to adapt to longer periods of drought, add moisture to their soil, capture carbon in the atmosphere, and cultivate species that can be commercialized or consumed in times of resource scarcity. To meet these needs, the Vicente Guerrero group is now engaged in a project of transplanting 20,000 Maguey (Agave atrovirens) seedlings (grown with the support of JoinTrees in 2022-2023), plus reproducing an additional 20,000 Maguey plants and 10,000 Mexican Pinyon Pine trees (Pinus cembroides). These two species are planted together using an ancient indigenous agriculture system called Metepantle, which is an agroforestry system in which a variety of species are intercropped. In this project, and in all of the program’s regenerative agriculture work, the Vicente Guerrero team is promoting interventions that will restore native biodiversity, increase soil fertility, and further natural solutions to the climate crisis.

Ancestrally, Maguey is known as the wet nurse of Mexican ecosystems. The first archaeological evidence of Maguey cultivation dates to 6,500 years ago. The core of the plant, known as the ‘heart’, holds up to ten liters of water, sustaining moisture on the land. The whole plant serves as a haven for pollinators and small fauna. According to research carried out by the Vicente Guerrero group, the soil where Maguey are growing remains just as fresh or cooler than the topsoil of nearby forests. There have been studies that state that this species is also as efficient as trees at capturing carbon. In fact, some studies suggest that Maguey might even be better than trees, given that Maguey’s carbon capture continues into the night, while trees do so during daylight hours.

The Metepantle system being promoted by the Vicente Guerrero program will include the Native Pinyon Pine, as it is also a species that prevents erosion and it connects its roots to underground aquifers providing further moisture to the soil. Recent research suggests that this Mexican variety of Pinyon Pine also has significant carbon capture abilities.

The Vicente Guerrero Group has now grown and cared for 30,000 Magueys that are mature enough to be transplanted into their permanent locations. More small Maguey and 10,000 Pinyon Pine seedlings are growing in their nursery. The team members have been sharing with 100 farm families the virtues and importance of Maguey and Pinyon Pines and reintroducing Metepantles for the local ecosystem. The Vicente Guerrero team visits the families and their farms, answering any questions the families might have, and supporting the design of each individual Metepantle system. In parallel to this process of farmer to farmer educational exchange, they have now begun to transplant Maguey onto newly created Metepantle fields.

The objective of the program is to expand these agroforestry actions, recovering bio-diversity and ancestral regenerative agricultural practices on 800 small scale farms. This will translate into between 200 and 300 hectares of restored lands. The goal is that these actions will serve as an example to others in the country who wish to mitigate climate change, restore local biodiversity, and mitigate food insecurity.

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In the spring of 2023, my spouse Anna Ruth Hershberger and I planted 6500 trees on the north side of Goshen Indiana. A JoinTrees grant from Mennonite Men helped with purchasing and planting these native seedlings. After our tree planting it did not rain for 3 weeks and the temperature hit 90 degrees many days during that time period. Talk about stress.

We were blessed to have a faith community, friends and family during this time. Clay Bottom Farms let us borrow their tractor. A good friend lent us a trailer which we could load a 300 gallon tote of water on. Five evenings a week we watered. Volunteers from our church’s youth group, a next door neighbor, family, friends, ages ranging from 8 years old to 79 all helping us. Thanks to this group and Steve Thomas, who I consider to be my tree mentor, the tree seedlings made it through the drought with 90+ percent of them surviving.

Photo: Anna Ruth Hershberger and Darren Miller and daughter Iona, Steve Thomas with Mennonite Men, and forester Michael Denman.

When I was a teenager growing up on a farm in central Illinois my father’s hobby for those years seemed to be planting trees. Our family planted trees on our farm, at church, at a cemetery and at the local elementary school where my father served on the board. My job was to water them week after week after week. Did I enjoy this job? Not really. At this stage of life I wanted to get done as soon as possible and sneak away to play baseball. However watering and working with trees as a youth did plant a seed in me that grew into a love for nature and a love for planting trees as an adult.

My professional career for the last 30 plus years has been supplying stains and varnishes to the cabinet and furniture industry. I worked closely with Amish communities mainly in Indiana but also in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Illinois. People often ask, ‘Can you build furniture?’ The answer is no. I cannot build it, but I can make it look beautiful. However, to build beautiful furniture, trees need to be cut down for lumber to make furniture. This industry has provided me with a weekly paycheck for many years.

One of my favorite Psalms is 24.1. It starts with, ‘The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it’. For me these words are powerful and need respect. I believe a responsibility of mine as a Christian is to help care for God’s creation and not just take from it. Try to leave it the same or a little nicer for the next generation. It only seems right to me to plant trees and help replace at least a part of all the trees that I have supplied stain and finish for over the years.

My family is another reason I am planting trees. Anna Ruth has worked with Anabaptist Climate Collaborative and caring for the environment is important to her. Through her and by watching how she loves and cares for the earth has rubbed off on my life. I also have two daughters who I want to pass on a love of nature to.

Why plant trees now? For some it may be climate change. For others from the furniture industry it may be to have lumber for their children to have future cabinet shops. I have Amish friends who have converted 50 and 60 acres of agricultural land into natural habitat for deer hunting. For me, I plant trees to care for God’s creation. The reason doesn’t really matter, as long as people are planting more trees. If anyone has interest in planting trees contact Mennonite Men and help them reach their goal of planting 1,000,000 trees by 2030.

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As homeowner Wilford Miller watched a tree-planting ceremony in the yard of his home built by Mennonite Disaster Service (MDS) volunteers, his smile said it all.

Miller, a resident of the town of Iowa, Louisiana, had spent month after month recovering from flooding that struck his home and ruined his property. In February, along with his new home, Miller received a young orange tree, planted by volunteers in his yard.

The tree is the fruit of a partnership between MDS and Mennonite Men, who have agreed to purchase trees for homes newly built or repaired by MDS volunteers. This is one of eleven tree plantings Mennonite Men assisted with in the last year.

‘It’s delightful to see the joy this tree brings to the homeowner,’ said Steve Thomas, who coordinates the JoinTrees tree planting program for Mennonite Men.

Karla Friesen, who coordinates the tree planting program for MDS, said she hopes to grow the effort even more. ‘We think this is a great way to help the communities replace damaged trees, enhance the home, and support the ecosystem after a disaster,’ she said.

Reba Place Fellowship (Evanston, IL), an intentional Christian Community in the Anabaptist tradition, has been sharing life and finances since 1957. Expenses such as utilities, fuel, public transportation are paid from our ‘common purse.’ These expenses are paid or reimbursed from a central bookkeeping office. While sharing our expenses, members in recent years have been looking for responses to environmental changes.

Thus, a group of RPF members gather periodically for ‘Eco conversations.’ A goal of this group is to identify projects or actions the RPF community can take in response to climate change. Criteria for actions include identifying areas of focus (housing, energy use and production, soil conservation and food production, advocacy) as well as identifying actions implementable at different levels (individuals, small groups, the community as a whole, government policy). We see potential for an effective and measurable strategy for corporate action by partnering to plant trees.

Hence, in the past year, RPF members developed a proposal to work with the JoinTrees initiative of Mennonite Men to offset our transportation emissions going forward. RPF members already record their fuel expenses, both as individuals and businesses. Research identified formulas for equating a) gallons of fuel purchased into b) gallons of fuel consumed to c) metric pounds of carbon emissions to d) carbon absorbed by mature trees to e) cost of planting new trees to f) estimated annual financial contributions to off set carbon emissions. As we discussed the proposal with our members, we developed a number of ways of calculating gallons of fuel purchased in order to accommodate the various preferences of how individuals do their recordkeeping. Even with agreement about corporate action, individual variety of habits need to be recognized and respected.

This proposal focuses upon vehicle fuel consumption and airline travel. Our research determined that train transportation is highly efficient in regards to emissions attributable to individuals. Also, public local transportation seemed too difficult to systematically collect. Airline transportation, however, is a high-emissions form of transportation. Many airlines now publish CO2 emissions for individual trips at the time of ticket purchases. Otherwise, formulas are readily available to calculate airline emissions for trips based upon departure and destination information.

Reba Place Fellowship chose to work with Mennonite Men for a number of reasons. One member researched a number of organizations engaged in tree planting. Mennonite Men proved to be more responsive, accessible, informative than larger and older organizations. Mennonite Men also engages in on-going sustainable forestry programs, recognizing the need for maintaining as well as planting trees, training foresters, and paying attention to the context in the selection of appropriate trees to plant. Additionally, Mennonite Men works with many world-wide partners that members of Reba Place Fellowship also are invested in. Hence, working with Mennonite Men leverages work in Latin America, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Hungry World Farm in Tiskilwa, Illinois, in which members of RPF are already invested.

While we recognize arbitrary judgments in our formulas of calculation, it is important that we develop tools which continually educate us about our individual and collective practices, and base our contributions to Mennonite Men on actual consumption. We not only want to offset our carbon emissions; we also want to change our ongoing patterns of consumption. We will continue to wrestle with what we contribute to ongoing ‘tree maintenance.’ More significantly, we recognize that while human-caused carbon emissions have been increasing since the start of the industrial revolution, the most rapid escalation of rate and total quantity of emissions has occurred in our own lifetimes, and that of our community. How, then, do we address previous carbon emissions we, ourselves, have contributed to the environment? Natural gas consumption emissions may be a next step for us to track and seek to offset.

Hence, tools that track our actual consumption encourage changes of behavior, which, by God’s grace, may also lead to changes of heart, mind, and spirit. It is not in our capacity alone to stop global warming or heal the earth. Rather, through tangible repentance, we draw closer to God’s heart for shalom with the earth and our future generations. Prayerful action unites us with God at work in our world. This is our hope. May it be so!

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Peggy and Jeff Boshart live on Peace of Eden Farm, located west of Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin. Glacial drumlins accentuate the landscape. The poorest soils in the area are not very suitable for crop production and are often covered with oak, hickory, and cherry woodlots. Peggy’s family purchased this farm when she was in middle school. Jeff was a city kid from Lebanon, Pennsylvania, but who grew up in a family that enjoyed camping, birdwatching, and gardening. They met as interns in Florida at a Christian non-profit organization called ECHO (Educational Concerns for Hunger Organization). Later, they served as intern supervisors in Haiti for ECHO, and as community development coordinators in the Dominican Republic for the Church of the Brethren.

Fifteen years ago, the Bosharts moved to Wisconsin and built a home on a corner of her parent’s 200-acre farm. Peggy’s parents have gradually turned over part of the farm – first about 3 acres of cropland that was converted to vegetable gardens, a small orchard, and a pasture for a few sheep and a small chicken flock, and recently 37 more acres that contain a several acre woodlot. Immediately, with the help of a government grant, 20 acres were planted in permanent pasture and divided up by electric fencing into smaller sections for rotational grazing. Produce from the farm is sold at several local farmers markets. Vegetable production, primarily salad greens in the colder months, and tomatoes in the summer, is year-round with the aid of high tunnels. Lamb, eggs, fruit, apple cider, and maple syrup round out the seasonal offerings.

In the 1990’s in preparation for overseas work, Peggy and Jeff received Masters’ degrees from Cornell University. Peggy focused her studies on animal nutrition and Jeff on Adult Education, both in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Jeff took several classes that touched on agroforestry in both tropical and temperate settings. The term agroforestry encompasses a variety of practices, all of which include the intentional integration of both tree products and crop or animal farming in farming systems on the same piece of land. Through proper design and species selections, agroforestry systems offer both short- and long-term financial opportunities, wildlife habitat, and synergistic interactions that mimic nature. Funding to establish tree plantings is available through grants from the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS).

One category of agroforestry that combines Peggy’s love of working with animals and Jeff’s love of planting trees is known as silvopasture. Silvopasture is the practice of integrating trees and livestock production on the same field. Plans are in the works to begin a silvopastoral demonstration in one of the pastures, with trees being planted with wide spacing to mimic a temperate savanna ecosystem. Jeff reached out for advice on spacing and tree species selection from the Savanna Institute in nearby Madison, Wisconsin.

Caring for God’s creation is what brought Peggy and Jeff together and is the motivation behind all that they do. Their two teenagers share this passion as both are looking to further their studies in environmental science. The Bosharts also expect to have solar panels installed on their barn later this year. The goal of the farm is to serve their local community by providing healthy food, as well as being good neighbors to their global community by capturing carbon through the conversion of cropland to permanent pasture, along with tree planting.

Are you pursuing a tree-planting project in your community? Do you want to be part of Mennonite Men’s JoinTrees project to plant one million trees by 2030? Send us an email and let us know what you’re working on at info@mennonitemen.org.

​ On Oct. 22, 2022, EPIC, the Ecumenical Project for International Cooperation, Inc., received $20,000 from Mennonite Men to facilitate the planting of 20,000 trees by the Baja Verapaz Sustainable Agriculture and Health Education Program. Program staff expects to greatly exceed planting expectations with up to 34,248 trees planted this grant year. The exact number of trees that are planted will be known when the tree planting season has finished.

Trees were planted this grant year in 18 communities with a total of 277 families involved in planting. These families receive the trees without cost, but they are not paid anything for all of the work they do carrying the trees to the planting locations (sometimes long distances), digging the large holes for planting, and caring for the trees.

About 40% of the trees will be used in reforestation of badly eroding land. Frequently this serious deforestation has been caused by powerful lumbering companies or wealthy individuals coming in and cutting forests illegally. The deforestation causes soil erosion and multiple negative effects in the environment. Perhaps one of the most serious effects is that the small streams on which local populations depend for their farm and household use have less water. Doing reforestation is the most difficult work of the project.

Photo: (Right) Members of the village of Chivaquito are planting seeds of several varieties of native trees in a seed bed they have prepared. Note that the seed bed is near water so that in the dry season it can be watered. (Below) Women of the group transplant the seedlings from the seedbed into individual grow bags.

Approximately 30% of the trees will be planted on the farms of local participants in a wide variety of small agroforestry projects. These consist of a managed mix of trees planted to produce various products: food to eat or sell, fodder for livestock by cutting lower tree branches, lumber for houses, sustainably grown firewood for the family, etc. Producing lumber and fuelwood from these plantings protect trees from being removed from more valuable intact forest ecosystems. The objective is to restore the land while also producing an economic advantage for the farm family.

Another on-the-farm way the trees will be used is to create living fences. Planting rows of cypress trees can solve a major problem contributing to deforestation in the region. Farmers cut down small native trees to make fence posts for barbed wire fences, but the life of these fence posts is only 6 to 8 years. Planting rows of cypress as living fences solves this cause of deforestation. About 28% of the trees planted will become living fences.

To curb the consumption of junk foods and to improve local nutrition, especially that of children, 375 grafted fruit trees have been planted this grant year. These have mostly been planted by women relatively close to their homes to enable easy access to the fruit and to be able to bring water to the trees in very dry weather

Many of the trees were grown on local family farms before being transported to their final planting spots. A total of 54 families were actively involved in creating tree nurseries to produce trees for transplanting. These program participants had hoped to produce many more trees than they did, but their nurseries suffered large losses because of drought and the much hotter than normal temperatures that were experienced in Guatemala as a result of climate change.

The climate and food security situation is very worrisome in this area. The temperatures this year have been unprecedented, and for several years most of the Baja Verapaz region has experienced droughts and the rainfall that has arrived has been erratic and not with the normal timing. As a response to these challenges, the leaders of the Baja Verapaz program are planting only native trees and those of other regions that have been shown to be adapted to a dry area. However, they are continually searching for more drought resistant varieties to mitigate the climate crisis.

This large grant and planting project follows a similar grant and project in 2022, where Mennonite Men granted 20,000 and EPIC Baja Verapaz Sustainable Agriculture Program planted 35,385 trees. You can read about Don Antonio and Doña Hermelinda who, with their family, helped to supply trees for the project in their nursery.

Once other large-scale tree projects like this receive sufficient funding and are completed in 2024, Mennonite Men’s JoinTrees program will be 1/3 of the way toward its goal of planting one million trees by as a way to combat climate change. Read more about the program and ways you can get involved at MennoniteMen.org/jointrees.

​This piece originally appeared at www.mennonitemission.net on August 30, 2023.

In early August 2023, Q’eqchi’ Bezaleel Mennonite Educational Center students and Iglesia Nacional Evangélica Menonita Guatemalteca (INEMGUA, National Evangelical Mennonite Church of Guatemala) church leaders planted 367 Hass avocado (Persea americana) trees at the education center in San Juan Chamelco, Alta Verapaz, Guatemala. Funds to purchase the trees were provided by Mennonite Men through the JoinTrees campaign to plant one million trees by 2030. This campaign targets climate change by increasing tree and forest cover. Mennonite Mission Network provided an additional $500 for transporting the trees, organic fertilizer and other materials.

Photo: Bezaleel agriculture teacher Alejandro Hub Caz (second from right) who coordinated the tree-planting project, celebrates the work they have accomplished with teacher Luvia Guillermo de Ac (third from the left) and four of the students who planted trees. Q’eqchi’ Bezaleel Mennonite Educational Center in San Juan Chamelco, Alta Verapaz, Guatemala.

With a deep commitment to spiritual growth and environmental responsibility, while serving as president of the INEMGUA, Santiago Iqui and former Mission Network international service worker Deb Byler envisioned a project that would not only contribute to the beautification of the education center’s landscape and provide produce for the students at the education center but also serve as a tangible expression of the Mennonite faith’s teachings on caring for the environment. Mission Network is a partner of INEMGUA.

Months of research and planning preceded the actual tree-planting endeavor. Church leaders collaborated closely with consultant engineers and an agricultural technician to examine the education center site for drainage concerns and exotic and endangered plant species. They also collected soil samples for testing to ensure the trees would thrive.

They chose to plant Hass avocado trees based on their ecological suitability to the region, as well as their ability to provide valuable ecosystem services, such as carbon sequestration, soil stabilization and habitat creation.

‘Helping with trees in agroforestry projects like this is especially important because these trees not only help sequester carbon, cool the planet, and reduce deforestation but also support the livelihoods of families. So we get multiple benefits by planting trees in communities like San Juan Chamelco,’ said Steve Thomas, Mennonite Men Coordinator for USA.

The church leaders worked together with Bezaleel’s agriculture teacher Alejandro Hub Caz to include the education center’s students and teachers in the planting initiative to foster a sense of collective responsibility and ownership in the project. One of the project’s stated objectives is to teach students to manage trees so they can help reforest their local communities once they graduate. Guided by environmental experts, the volunteers learned proper planting techniques, which ensured that the trees had the best chance of survival and growth.

Ongoing stewardship and care for the newly planted trees is important for food security and will benefit the students and teachers. A maintenance schedule was developed, which includes fence maintenance to protect the trees from animals and keeping the areas around the trees clear of any other plant growth.