Sebastian Africano, Executive Director and Gemara Gifford, International Director pose with Doña Norma in front of a community-operated tree nursery in the community of La Tigra in Honduras.
For the third consecutive year we earned a coveted 4-star rating from Charity Navigator, which demonstrates our strong financial health and commitment to accountability and transparency.
The devastating events of the past year and the economic hardship the world is facing have hit the non-profit sector hard, forcing our organization to adapt, re-think, strategize and get creative. Through it all, our donors have stuck with us, as we recognize that the communities we serve need us the most at this moment.
We have spent the last 23 years working and advocating for some of the world’s most vulnerable communities, and have come to a crucial moment in which we need to step up in a big way. As we continue to work towards our goals during these trying times, being able to present our loyal donors with tangible and quantifiable results is crucial.
In a letter to Trees, Water & People, Charity Navigator President Michael Thatcher wrote: “This is our highest possible rating and indicates that your organization adheres to sector best practices and executes its mission in a financially efficient way.”
We are honored by this acknowledgement that we couldn’t achieve without our supporters, and thank you profusely for your trust in TWP.
About two months ago, almost two-hundred people gathered at the MotherLove 120 acre organic farm in Johnstown, CO to break bread, clink glasses, and celebrate summer at a Fortified Collaborations fundraiser for Trees, Water & People.
Local guests preparing for evening dinner on the farm!
Fortified Collaborations is one of the gems that makes Fort Collins unique. They convene the best local food producers, businesses, unique venues, and non-profit organizations in town at six professionally curated dinner experiences that nourish the body and soul.
This summer, they chose Trees, Water & People as the feature organization for their annual Heart of Summer Dinner. While the weather was doing as Colorado weather does (changing drastically hour to hour), we all had a blast setting up at this beautiful venue, and the end result was a fantastic sunset over a farm filled with music, friends and a beautiful spread.
Fortified Collaboration’s founder, Kristina Cash, said about the collaboration with TWP:
“The Heart of Summer dinner is such a great example of our local food ecosystems at work and Trees, Water, People really embody the importance of that through their work. They are the perfect beneficiary for this event that connects people to the land.”
Sebastian Africano, Executive Director of TWP (left) and Kristina Cash, Fortified Collaborations founder (right)
We greatly value the opportunity to share with new audiences, especially in our own community. Fortified Collaborations Heart of Summer Dinner gave us that opportunity, and put a fun exclamation point on TWP’s groundbreaking 20th year.
Mural in Guatemala depicting the history of displacement
by Patricia Flores White, Development Director
On Sunday, June 3rd, 2018, Volcán de Fuego erupted in Southern Guatemala, unleashing a massive pyroclastic flow that tore down the mountain’s southern flank at 50 mph. 300 are dead or missing while thousands were evacuated to relief shelters. Currently, recovery efforts have ceased and transportation in the area have been paralyzed, leaving the displaced indefinitely separated from their homes and livelihoods.
Among those displaced are the families of La Trinidad – one of Trees, Water & People’s (TWPs) partner communities and a member community of the Utz Che’ network. This is the third major displacement of this vulnerable population in a generation. Guatemala’s genocidal civil war drove them out of their native Huehuetenango into Mexico in the 1980s, only to be later resettled onto the high-risk flanks of Volcán Fuego.
Last year, we were fortunate enough to install cookstoves for 115 families in La Trinidad and to develop a plan to work on several projects with their coffee cooperative, Unión Huista. With the help of our generous TWP family of supporters, we have committed the month of July to fundraise for the community of La Trinidad as it navigates emergency relief, relocation, and negotiation with the State to keep access to its farmlands.
Map detailing area of pyroclastic flow and affected community
TWP is dedicated to improving people’s lives by helping people protect, conserve, and manage the natural resources upon which their well-being depends. While we are not a disaster relief agency we have the opportunity to work intimately with the affected communities in Guatemala during this time of chaos and devastation. We strive to live and breathe our community-based development philosophy in both words and action. As such, our Guatemalan partners, la Asociación de Forestería Comunitaria Utz Ché, have entrusted us to raise funds for the prolonged recovery process facing La Trinidad.
Everyone plays a role in making the world more sustainable and humane. Our donors provide the means, TWP provides networks and know-how, our local partners deliver solutions, and each beneficiary provides local materials and sweat equity. Together we drive change and create dignified, healthy futures for our global community. La Trinidad and their local coffee cooperative Unión Huista will need years to recover their agricultural productivity, and TWP and Utz Ché have committed to be there every step of the way.
We honor and appreciate everything that you do to help vulnerable communities like La Trinidad when they need it most. We could not do this work without your help. You will continue to see this crisis featured throughout the month of July as we garner aid and public support for the communities of Guatemala impacted by this natural disaster.
Give today to help our partners in Guatemala begin their long and arduous journey towards recovery.
Clean cookstoves don’t just save lives; they add healthy years to someone’s life.
In November of last year, Trees, Water & People and our Nicaraguan partners, Proleña, partnered with Aprovecho Research Center to compare the emissions from open-fire stoves to those from Proleña’s improved stoves, manufactured in Managua. The results were alarming, which is why we are raising $8,000 to provide 60 clean cookstoves to those 60 study participants still cooking over open fires.
This woman was a volunteer participant in our study. An air quality monitor hangs around her neck as she stands by her traditional open fire stove.
This study took place near Jinotega, Nicaragua with half of the families using traditional open fire stoves, and the other half using Proleña’s clean cookstoves. Each stove user volunteered to wear a small monitoring device that attaches to the shirt near the woman’s face to approximate her exposure to smoke for a 24-hour period. These monitors collect small airborne particles, referred to as PM2.5 in the air quality monitoring field, that are the most commonly measured pollutant coming from wood smoke. PM2.5 particles are widely accepted as a principle source of illnesses like chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, lower respiratory infections, lung cancer, and cardiovascular disease.
These are some of the filters from the particle monitors used in this study. The filters on the left are from homes with a clean cookstove. The ones on the right are from homes using traditional open fires. Photo by the Aprovecho Research Center.
The average traditional stove user in this study was consistently exposed to 245 µg/m3 of particulates, qualifying their kitchens as a “HEAVY POLLUTED” environment, according to the EPA’s Air Quality Index. In homes where an improved stove had been introduced and adopted, exposure to indoor air pollution was reduced by an average of 63%.
Averted Disability Adjusted Life Years (ADALY) is a commonly used metric for public health studies that represent the number of years of healthy life made possible by reducing exposure to particulate matter in smoke. Using the ADALY methodology, we determined that if clean cookstoves were installed in 500 homes (helping 2,500 people), we could extend life in that population by 286 years. This is why we’ve launched the “Clean Cookstoves and Healthy Families in Nicaragua” campaign because, quite frankly, cooking shouldn’t kill!
Overall, this study was an excellent reminder that clean cookstoves are indeed critical, tangible tools that can help improve a person’s quality of life measurably. It is difficult to put a price on extra years of health, but with $8,000 we’ll be able to complete funding for 60 stoves needed in Jinotega.
Help thank the women in this study who opened their kitchens to us, and who are still breathing smoke as you read this. Give Health. Give Hope. Give Today!
This woman uses her clean cookstove provided by Proleña to cook tortillas.
Since 2006, Utz Che’ has been a tireless advocate for over 40 indigenous Guatemalan communities committed to protecting and sustainably managing their forest resources. Utz Che’ acts as a loudspeaker for indigenous causes and concerns, which are otherwise easily dismissed from the public discourse and policy-making dialogues.
Trees, Water & People (TWP) was introduced to Utz Che’s leadership in 2010 and has worked with them to add fuel-efficient cookstove technology to their services to reduce pressure on the local forests from which fuelwood is harvested, as well as reduce indoor air pollution. After several years of prototyping designs with Utz Che’ communities and Guatemalan manufacturers, last year we embarked on the full-scale implementation of 500 clean cookstoves manufactured by two local enterprises — ECOCOMAL and Estufa Doña Dora. The project was so successful that this year we are raising funds to install 500 more in high-need communities.
In 2016, this community in southern Guatemala received Doña Dora stoves and were all trained by Doña Dora employees on how to install, use, and maintain their new clean cookstoves.
The cookstove models selected for this project are partially pre-manufactured for consistency but are installed in a brick and mortar body constructed by trained community members. In 2016, this included 159 men and 371 women. Hands-on training in installation, use, and maintenance of the stoves increases local investment in the program through sweat equity and allows community members to become more intimate with the technology. Community engagement improves the local support network around the cookstoves.
This woman in southern Guatemala uses her clean cookstove that was built last year to make tortillas for her family.
Cooking is a very personal tradition in Central America, so new technologies must be able to cook the same foods, with the same fuels, in the same amount of time as the traditional designs if they are to be accepted by all members of society. Trees, Water & People’s years of expertise, coupled with a locally fine-tuned design, and the trust and rapport that Utz Che’ has with its member communities make for an extraordinarily effective, participatory, and meaningful partnership.
If you would like to help us build clean cookstoves in Guatemala, or would like to learn more about the importance of this project, click the button below.
I ask for your attention again as we get critical news from Hurricane Matthew’s wake in northwestern Haiti. In total, 55,000 people have been directly impacted by the storm in the two municipalities where TWP has worked since 2007. Our colleagues at AMURT have just returned from a trip to the area to assess needs, and are seeing immense challenges ahead. Roads have been washed out, irrigation systems have been destroyed, and almost all livelihood activities have ground to a halt. 70% of crops for this fall’s harvest are gone. 90% of the salt basins used to harvest sea salt have been flooded with mud. The limited sources for potable water in the area have been washed out.
A family in northwest Haiti stands by their crumbling home after Hurricane Matthew. Photo by Sara Wolf.
Here is a first-hand account from our partners at AMURT.
“Just returned from the Northwest after a very hard trip – productive but very heartbreaking at the same time. The damage after the last inundations and heavy rains has been much more extensive than I thought. In fact when I went to the area after Matthew and compare what I saw then and what I witness now – it’s several degrees more severe and critical. I visited villages that have such substantial malnutrition, whose residents have lost all of their livelihoods and have nothing left to them. Several villages had cases of infant death due to malnutrition (only 3 weeks after the hurricane!), cholera returning, no drinking water, mud covering everything, productive soil covering salt basins, eroded roads…
This is a very extensive humanitarian crisis that is not talked about anywhere in the news. It’s as if this region is forgotten by all and is slipping into a spiral of vulnerability that will surely deepen week by week. I wanted to send you a quick email while I’m fresh back with very strong impressions and renewed urgency to respond.”
Entire villages turned into rubble after Hurricane Matthew blew threw northwest Haiti last month. Photo by Sara Wolf.
Due to their economic fragility and geographic isolation, families in this region have nowhere to turn to feed their families. They can migrate to one of Haiti’s overcrowded cities to live in the squalor of an informal urban slum, or they can rebuild their lives where they are. At TWP, we’re supporting the latter alternative – providing emergency relief via our partners, and helping the region rebuild and reinvest their way to a livable state.
Our resources for this effort are extremely limited, so we turn to you, our donors to help us with a special contribution to the effort. Again – 100% of the funds raised for this relief and reconstruction campaign will go to the communities in the Northwest Artibonite. No amount is too small. We will keep you posted as updates arise.
by Sebastian Africano, International Director of Trees, Water & People
For the last week I’ve been pondering the severity of Hurricane Matthew’s destruction in the Caribbean, a region in which I’ve spent a lot of time, and where I’ve worked with dozens of chronically vulnerable communities. While Matthew made landfall on the south coast of Haiti, which is what most are seeing in the news, I had not seen one mention of the conditions on Haiti’s northern peninsula, the region in which TWP has worked since 2007 with partners at AMURT and LOCAL.
Today I received the first news from the communities with which we’ve worked, and it’s not good (see below). As such, Trees, Water & People will be raising funds for the relief effort in the Northwest, and for continued stabilization of the hillsides with trees, shrubs, and grasses. 100% of funds raised will go to the recovery and reconstruction effort. Here is an email from our colleagues at AMURT, who just conducted a 3-day visit to the region:
Even before Hurricane Matthew, the northwest of Haiti was designated as an extreme vulnerability zone as a result of the 3-year drought – the farming and environment of the entire area has been devastated and has led to an increase of migration, the spread of cholera, and shrinking of livelihoods. The passing of Matthew along the NW of Haiti has devastated all coastal communities which rely on fishing, salt production, and subsistence farming. The photos show the extensive damage done to houses, but the damage extends inland – most of the irrigation canals have been destroyed, farms wiped out, livestock lost, salt basins submerged in mud, trees uprooted. Polluted water sources and very poor sanitation raise the danger of the expansion of the cholera epidemic which still plagues the region.
This couple stands in front of a line of destroyed houses after Hurricane Matthew in northwest Haiti. Photo by Sara Wolf.
Hurricane Matthew has increased the vulnerability of this already impoverished and isolated corner of Haiti to a new level, which is exacerbated by the complete lack of basic services. The real crisis will deepen week by week as the sparse stocks of seeds and supplies begin running out. With the primary sources of livelihoods (in particular salt production and farming) severely impacted, those most vulnerable have lost the only source of meager income that has helped them meet their basic food needs. The situation is critical and requires an immediate response which is integrated, durable and targeting the most vulnerable populations. Assessment
280 houses completely destroyed, 640 houses inundated and damaged, 720 houses severely damaged, five schools severely damaged.
90% of salt basins severely impacted/destroyed.
Majority of farming land and irrigation severely impacted from the mountains to the coast.
Majority of road severely impacted, access to most inland areas very difficult.
This family stands beside their demolished home after Hurricane Matthew raged through northwest Haiti. Photo by Sara Wolf
Greatest Needs
First phase – emergency food, water, sanitation, medical and emergency kits, temporary shelter, child-friendly spaces, cash for work to clear debris and repair roads and salt basins.
Second phase – Livelihood creation, cash for work to protect watersheds and coastal areas, construction of permanent shelter, school reconstruction.
Program Focus of AMURT during the first 3-month period
Emergency food distribution (dry rations) and hot meal canteens for vulnerable groups (children under 5, elderly, pregnant women and handicapped) – a total of 2,500 beneficiaries in 5 coastal communities
Distribution of Non-Food Items (NFI) and emergency shelter kits until more extensive reconstruction can be planned
Water and sanitation – treated drinking water stations, latrines, sanitation education
Emergency Child-Friendly Spaces – daily hot meals and psycho-social and arts programs for children
Cash for Work program to repair roads, damaged areas, salt basins
Assistance to re-build the damaged fishing, salt production, and farming (tools, seeds, accompaniment)
Trees, Water & People has planted almost 500,000 trees in northern Haiti with our partners, and with any luck, they lessened the damage downhill of where they were planted. All funds raised by TWP will be used for the priorities listed above, and any remaining after the initial response will go toward rebuilding tree nurseries and replanting the contour channels and check dams that reduce erosion and mudslide risk. This is a desperately isolated region, which is why we worked here in the first place – let’s not let it be forgotten as the country recovers from yet another devastating natural disaster.
From the Trees, Water & People team: We wish you a healthy and happy holiday season! We are so thankful that you are part of our community. TWP’s programs protect the environment while improving livelihoods, a true win-win for people and the planet. This work would not be possible without the continued support of our friends and donors.
Thanks to a few very generous TWP supporters, we have a $25,000 matching grant available! When you make a donation today, it will be matched dollar for dollar.
We have big plans for the New Year and we hope you will consider a donation to our innovative, community-based programs that support conservation from the ground up. Don’t delay – every donation will be matched while funds last!
Happy #GivingTuesday! Today, the world is celebrating the millions of nonprofits and NGOs working tirelessly to create a better future for all. We hope you will take a moment to make a gift to one of our community-based conservation programs that improve people’s livelihoods while conserving the environment.
Trees, Water & People’s unique community-based development model is based on the philosophy that the best way to help those most in need is to involve them directly in the design and implementation of local environmental and economic development initiatives. This creates ownership, involvement, and financial sustainability well into the future. Our proven development model of training and execution, coupled with an enterprise approach, engages and inspires local residents to preserve their precious natural resources.
Celebrate #GivingTuesday by making a contribution today!
Sustainable Development, Sustainable Livelihoods 