Finally Together Again

Silas Red Cloud leads the crew by creating a line for tree planters to follow. Photo by Evan Barrientos

by José Chalit Hernandez, Marketing Manager

Planting trees is about more than just planting trees. We hear this frequently from our partners. On Lakota Tribal Lands, planting trees is done with great care, intention, and gratitude. When asked about what makes Pine Ridge a special place for him, Chief Henry Red Cloud told us it was the beautiful country, the rolling hills and the animals. “It’s all here,” he mentioned as he spoke on the importance of honoring trees as relatives. 

After a year of managing the pandemic in their community, the Oglala Sioux Tribe was excited to join us and Red Cloud Renewable (RCR) last month by sending out a group of hard-working tree planters to join our spring planting. Thanks to all of the tree planters being vaccinated against Covid-19, TWP staff (who were also vaccinated) were able to join for the first time since 2019’s planting season to reconnect with old friends and meet new people. For five days, we planted trees alongside Lakota community members and visited former planting sites where we observed many healthy and robust ponderosa trees that were planted 5+ years ago. 

Tink and her son Ladon help arrange a tray of tree seedlings in the green house at RCR. Photo by Evan Barrientos

For many in the tree planting crew, the spring planting season presented a valuable opportunity to earn income, feel empowered and reconnect with others in the community after a long year of uncertainty and scarcity. Each day started bright and early with freshly made coffee and a hearty breakfast. During meals and between activities, the hired cook that supported the project, Tink, shared stories with us and the other tree planters about her time at Standing Rock supporting the NODAPL camp. Her son Ladon would run around the Sacred Earth Lodge at RCR with a big grin and greet us all in the morning and be there in the afternoon after returning from tree planting. For the first time in a long time, we felt deeply connected to our partner community. We felt incredibly grateful to join forces with this group of generous, resilient, and hard-working people. 

While in Pine Ridge, we also began filming the long-awaited short documentary about our reforestation efforts, thanks to another funding sponsor. As a supporter of our tribal reforestation programs, we want you to be among the first to gain exclusive access to this video content later this summer! See how below.

In New Mexico, our National Program staff are currently meeting with the Tri-Pueblo Coalition to finalize timelines and logistics for tree planting in the Jemez Mountains in the coming months. Tree planting in New Mexico will also be a unique opportunity as we enter our third year of partnership with Santo Domingo Pueblo and the second year with Cochiti and Jemez Pueblos. So many exciting things are on the horizon, and we can not wait to share more stories directly from our partners with you. Thank you for believing in and supporting Indigenous-led projects! 

4 Generations of Tree Planting

4 Generations of Tree Planters!

10,000 SW Douglas Fir tree seedlings from the San Juan Mountains have gone into the ground near the Tent Rocks National Monument on Santo Domingo (Kewa) Pueblo’s Tribal Lands; the 3,000 remaining seedlings were taken to the Santa Fe Indian School by Cochiti tribal members where they will be planted by students and community leaders on nearby public lands.

With the help of the Santo Domingo Pueblo War Chief and his lieutenant, we were able to recruit over 15 volunteers from the local tribe to gather last week to inaugurate and launch our first joint reforestation project! As we’ve reported previously, the “Las Conchas” forest fire of 2011 devastated the highlands of the Pueblo community where Douglas Fir trees used for traditional ceremonial and conservation purposes were burned en masse. Trees, Water & People’s collaboration with the Kewa Pueblo is a one of a kind reforestation program that marries indigenous traditions and customs with climate resilience strategies of the West.

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Training the volunteers on the basics

After delivering the seedlings to the Pueblo’s greenhouse last Tuesday, we settled into a meeting at the Governor’s office where strategy, timeline, and scope of the project were revisited one final time. We originally planned to start planting on Wednesday, but due to heavy rains, the War Chief and his staff decided to hold off one more day for the climate to dry. Nevertheless, rain is a significant blessing and element for many Pueblo communities – the timing of our delivery of the seedlings felt more than apt. Thursday morning, we embarked to the planting site on top of the mountain in a line of 4WD trucks carrying just under 900 seedlings.

Rocky road conditions aside, we arrived at the site just shy of the morning breeze and kicked off the day with a prayer from the War Chief himself and a short, hands-on training on our methods and strategy. Unlike ponderosa pines, we learned from the New Mexico State Forestry Division that Douglas Fir seedlings like to be planted in cluster patterns of about 25 seedlings spread 2-3 feet from each other; this is a term called “nucleation”. The volunteer crew was quick to learn, and everyone was happy to teach one another, even in their native language.

Most impressive of all – beyond any technical achievements or success – is the multi-generational impact and participation that a project like this generates. We remember the recurring sentiment expressed by the War Chief and other elders in the community throughout the day:

“We may not be around here long enough to see these trees mature, but it’s important we have our youth here to experience it and participate in the work themselves as they are the future stewards of these lands”. 

At every stage of sustainable development, TWP’s core mission has always been to empower local people to manage the natural resources they depend on, and we believe this happens best at the participatory level. The local tribe thanks you for your donations and commitment to the well-being of their community and their land – your dedication is what helps climate vulnerable communities continue to be resilient and powerful amidst our changing environment.

To learn more about how you can support our reforestation program on Tribal Lands, visit – https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/indigenous-west-reforestation/

Swinging into the ground to make room for a seedling

Vanilla and Turmeric – Job Creation in Nicaragua

First turmeric harvest of 2019!

Smallholder livelihoods across Central America are threatened by extreme weather, warmer average temperatures, and a longer dry season related to climate change.

Many of the smallholder farmers we work with in Central America depend on coffee for a major share of their income, but with prices at 15-year lows, coffee is currently being harvested at a loss and rural incomes have plummeted. That is why Trees, Water & People is happy to introduce our partnership with “Doselva”, a Nicaraguan social enterprise that grows, processes, and markets spices organically grown in diverse agroforestry systems.

 

Vanilla Pompona fruit

Nicaraguan farmer

Nicaraguan farmer

Our collaboration with Doselva primarily focuses on helping farmers transition away from low-paying cash crops by diversifying into turmeric, ginger, and vanilla. These spices are currently in high demand and serve as “a useful diversification strategy that can both improve incomes and also maintain or enhance a biodiverse and forested farming landscape” (Doselva). Vanilla’s origins are in Mesoamerica, and it grows in similar conditions to shade-grown coffee, but currently, less than 2% of the world’s supply comes from the region. As it takes 3-4 years to produce in earnest, turmeric, ginger, and other ground-cover crops help farmers buffer their income as they diversify their farms.

Laying out the harvest before packaging it

So far, Doselva has collected 5,186 hundredweight sacks of turmeric from 49 farmers from various regions in Nicaragua, and thousands of vanilla flowers have already bloomed with hopes of a full harvest being available in 2020-2021. In a year when Nicaragua saw the loss of over 200,000 jobs and the closure of hundreds of businesses and nonprofit organizations due to civil conflict, we are proud to say that we are helping farmers thrive with innovative partnerships that build sustainable rural economies.

If you’re interested in learning more about social enterprise projects like Doselva, please visit our website or contact our Executive Director at sebastian@treeswaterpeople.org

Welcoming New Leadership to the Tribal Program

As the storms and flood events in the Midwest this past winter and spring demonstrate, extreme weather events spurred by climate change are becoming the new normal. Often, those hardest hit are the most vulnerable, and their communities often lack comprehensive adaptation strategies to prepare for these shifts.

For that reason, we’re proud to welcome two talented Colorado State University (CSU) alumni to Trees, Water & People (TWP) who bring deep, personal experience in helping Native American communities thrive culturally, economically, and ecologically.

Dr. Valerie Small joins us as TWP’s new National Program Director, bringing several years of experience working with Tribal colleges and communities on climate adaptation strategies. She comes to us from the Crow Tribe in southern Montana and is excited to help us think bigger about climate readiness for indigenous communities across the Americas.

Dr. Valerie Small Ph.D. and James Calabaza at our office

 

James Calabaza came to us from the family farm where he grew up in Kewa (Santo Domingo) Pueblo, New Mexico and a position with the USDA in Albuquerque, where he worked in farm loan management. His vast background in counseling Native youth in both academic and community settings will help him lead TWP’s in-field operations and educational programs as our National Program Coordinator.

 

James and local Lakota tree planter during Pine Ridge reforestation

 

Our schedule for the National Program over the next six months is packed with new projects, new partnerships, and long-term visioning for TWP’s next 20 years. We know that to achieve great things, we have to make great investments in our organization, and we’re betting that these talented individuals will help us all do our best work yet for people and planet.

Please help us welcome Valerie and James to the TWP family!

Early Bet, Ongoing Impact

Family members of the Justa stoves original co-designer, Justa Nuñez

By Sebastian Africano, Executive Director

In the community development sector, it often takes years to know how well an idea delivers on its potential.  In 1998, Stuart Conway was on a mission to decrease firewood consumed for household cooking in Central America, to slow rates of deforestation. “Clean” cookstoves were a relatively blunt tool at the time – there were few, simple designs, minimal geographic coverage, and a nascent understanding of what made an “improved” cookstove better than tried and true traditional options.

Stuart made a bet via his new organization, Trees, Water & People (TWP), that local women, working with engineers that understood participatory design, could come up with something better than what was available.  After Hurricane Mitch in late 1998, the work began, and within the year, TWP, Aprovecho Research Center, and the community Aldea de Suyapa had debuted the Justa Stove, named after Justa Nuñez – the woman who most contributed to its design.

Twenty years later, the Justa Stove remains the flagship improved cookstove in Central America, and dozens of additional designs have sprung from its original iteration.  In March, I gave a talk on the history of the Justa Stove to 100 members of the Clean Stove Network of Latin America and the Caribbean, during their 3rd International Forum.  The positive response from organizations who had adopted the stove, others that had studied the stove, and yet others who had modified it to serve different markets, was validating, and humbling.

Presenting at the 3rd International Forum for Clean Stove Network of Latin America and the Caribbean.

The Justa Stove is designed by and for the user, which is one secret to its success.  Another is that it’s built by local masons using locally manufactured materials, and generates income for anyone willing to learn how to build it.  Most importantly, it’s easy to use; it’s aesthetically familiar and cooks the food people want to cook with the same speed, firewood, and pots that cooks are used to.  The fact that it uses 50% less wood and reduces smoke exposure in the household by 80% is just icing on the cake.

Central America is in crisis.  It sorely needs employment, innovation, investment, and participatory development.  The only way we can proactively reduce migration out of Central America is to invest in building resilient economies there – especially in rural areas.  TWP can help in real and tangible ways, but given the urgency, we need to redouble our efforts, and our reach.

There is currently a push to create hundreds of jobs in the cookstove sector through in-depth training of masons in theory, design, installation, maintenance, and refurbishment of the Justa Stove.  This is a dream situation for TWP, and with your generous support, we can put Central Americans back to work making local products that improve the environment and quality of life for tens of thousands of people per year. One stove costs between $75 – $100 to install, and it costs roughly $300 to fully train, equip, and certify new builders.

With over 250,000 Justa-type stoves installed to-date, and numerous studies proving its acceptance and efficacy, it’s now more than clear that Stuart Conway’s early bet on cookstoves has borne fruit.  The opportunity to build on this success is huge, and the time is now. If you’d like to support this effort, please reach out directly to TWP, or donate using the link below.

Thank you for reading – please spread the word about TWP across your networks!

Welcome to Our New Development Director, Annalise Mecham!

by Annalise Mecham, Development Director

I come to Trees, Water & People as an East coast transplant, having spent a majority of my life living in Virginia and all over New England. After living on Cape Cod for the past 12 years, my husband and I were ready for a bigger town, more opportunities, and better winters! After extensive research, we decided to relocate to Fort Collins and a few weeks ago packed up our two young boys, put our house on the market, and drove cross country (U-Haul and all!). So far, it has been one of the best decisions of my life.

One of the most exciting parts of this move has been my new job as Development Director at Trees, Water & People. I discovered TWP a year ago when I was researching nonprofits in the Fort Collins area. I was immediately intrigued by its mission of improving communities through the care and management of their natural resources. My grandparents were supporters and actively involved with the American Indian College Fund, so I was happy to see TWP’s work with Tribal communities. I was beyond excited to see their job posting this fall for a Development Director. I think I was the first to apply!

I have been working in nonprofit development for the past eight years, receiving my M.S. from Boston University in nonprofit management in 2011. I received my undergraduate degree in Environmental Education and had the honor of taking a year to explore the United States with the Expedition Education Institute, a traveling college that teaches ecological leadership through experiential experiences. It was a year that changed my life and the way I approach people, communities and the environment. I have a strong belief that the health of a community is directly affected by how they protect and preserve their local ecosystem.

While in New England, I worked at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA where I became hooked on the idea that a well-organized nonprofit can have a direct influence on improving individual lives. From there, I moved into the Development Director role at Calmer Choice, a nonprofit that taught social-emotional learning to students in the Cape Cod public schools, many of whom were underserved. It was here that I discovered my passion for serving marginalized communities and seeing first-hand the change that happens when committed people work together.

TWP’s mission is a perfect combination of my passions for environmental education, community empowerment, and nonprofit management. I am excited to start my journey as the Development Director at TWP. I look forward to creating and developing relationships with TWP’s partners, supporters, donors, volunteers, board members, and staff. Please feel free to reach out and introduce yourself! I would love to hear from you.

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Job Opening: Development Associate

 

The Development Associate aids the Development Director in raising funds to support all the national and international programs of Trees, Water & People (TWP), as well as fundraising for general operating expenses.

To learn more and to apply please visit our website.

Job Opening: National Program Assistant

This position will aid the National Director in managing Trees, Water & People’s (TWP) Tribal Renewable Energy, Food Security, and Watershed Protection programs.

To learn more about the position please click here.

Job Opening: Office Manager

We are hiring! To learn more and to apply for the Office Manager position please visit our website.