Connecting Biodiversity and Poverty Alleviation

Plant With Purpose shares the connection between Biodiversity and Poverty Alleviation. Read the article and check out their video below.

“While studying the natural environment, systems, cycles, and rhythms reveal themselves as their building blocks—the living and nonliving components that interact to form ecosystems, habitats, and our surroundings. In the United States, many of us appreciate a good hike or a weekend spent in the wilderness enjoying the diversity of Creation. For Plant With Purpose partnering farmers, they are dependent on these building blocks for their livelihoods. A greater number of “blocks” means a more robust and healthy system supporting them.

Over the past two decades, global conversations linking biodiversity and poverty alleviation have found a voice in the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Millennium Development Goals, the World Summit on Sustainable Development, and the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. As Dr. Ahmed Djoghlaf, Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity states, “Evidence suggests that not only do the poor depend on biodiversity for their subsistence needs, we all do. The rural poor depend disproportionally on local ecosystems for their survival however, while the rich can access vital ecosystem services through different markets. When the circumstances are right, biodiversity conservation can be a route both out of poverty and away from unsustainable development.“

These sentiments have long been a part of Plant With Purpose’s understanding of development work. And as we’ve worked to restore the environment over the years, we’ve seen birds return to nest in pine trees in Mexico, forests protected in Thailand, and a general understanding of Creation Care increase in partnering communities.

This month, we are setting foot in new territory to do a baseline biodiversity study of the Nyakazu Watershed in Burundi. This area has been protected since 1980 and is a region of great natural beauty, with waterfalls and rivers that have carved out caves and a deep gorge. It is home to mammals, birds, and many native plant species. As we monitor the diversity of this area, our ultimate hope is to see these native species begin to take back poorly managed land bordering the Nyakazu Watershed. And as the health of the native ecosystem increases, we expect to see a decrease in poverty.”

This information was taken from Plant With Purpose. To learn more, click here.

Kaleidoscope of Colors

Mark Your Calendars for The 29th Annual Planting Hope Gala:

Kaleidoscope of Colors

Saturday, October 12, 2013

5:30 in the Evening

Paradise Point Resort, San Diego

-Inspiring stories of transformation

-Sunset, cocktails, and silent auction on the Paradise Lawn overlooking Mission Bay

-Sumptuous dinner accompanied with California wine

-Live auction, Opportunity Drawing, and Fund-A-Need auction

-Free and convenient parking

Proceeds go toward empowering the rural poor to improve their lives and land.

To learn more about Plant with Purpose, click here.

Happy Earth Day!

In celebration of Earth day, I had the wonderful opportunity to volunteer with Plant with Purpose at San Diego’s Balboa Park Earth Day Fair. I helped introduce the public to Plant with Purpose, educate on the amazing partnerships they have with rural farmers and communities across the globe, and raise support to plant trees.

In correlation with Earth Day, Plant with Purpose has proudly announced their huge milestone of 10 million trees having been planted internationally in the effort to reverse the effect that deforestation has on the rural poor.

“The result of these trees going into the ground has been significant. Take for example, Charicia Exalus, a 68
year-old-widow who lives in Fonds-Verrettes, Haiti—a country where only 2 percent of the original forest remains. Thirteen years ago, the land Charicia owns was a barren hillside full of rocks and without trees. She utilized the training received from Plant With Purpose and began composting, building soil protection barriers, and planting trees. Charicia says, “Today, I am able to give fruits (oranges, avocados) to anyone who asks. I am a widow. I live with little. But in truth, we always have something to eat that comes from my home.” 

Planting trees is changing lives! If you’d like to plant a tree in honor of this accomplishment, donations can be made here. ”

To learn about Plant with Purpose, click here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gifts That Keep Giving: Trees Please

In December, Plant With Purpose is running a Christmas Trees Please campaign to reach 9 million trees planted internationally

“Deforestation and poverty are intimately linked together. As trees are cut down, surrounding farms becomes less productive. Water sources dry up, and erosion carries away the nutrient-rich topsoil. Planting trees fights poverty by restoring soil and water sources, bringing productivity back to the land. Fruit trees protect against erosion and provide a source of food at the same time. Nitrogen-fixing trees add vital nutrients back into the ground while anchoring and buffering topsoil. The results are increased food production and better nutrition for hungry children. Larger crop yields also lead to greater family income, which means money for children’s school fees and renewed hope for tomorrow.”

With $1, you can plant 1 tree.
With $10, you can plant 10 trees.
With $25, you can plant 25 trees.
With $50, you can plant 50 trees.
With $100, you can plant 100 trees.

Click here to donate now.

Today is Giving Tuesday

Today is Giving Tuesday, a day dedicated to giving! It is a day to be grateful for all that we have and an opportunity to give toward the causes we believe in.

Plant With Purpose’s work is transforming the lives of the rural poor in 278 communities worldwide. This means parents are providing for their families through financial stability, food security, improved health, and spiritual growth. With just a little knowledge, some tools, and resources, dignity and bright futures are within reach. Your financial gift TODAY will give hope to families around the world!

Give through Plant With Purpose’s Online Gift Catalog that can be found here.

Plant With Purpose also benefits when items are purchased through these partners:

• Holiday cards from Giving Cards
• T-shirt from This Shirt Helps
• Artwork from Help Ink
• Eden Valley Soil from Kellogg Garden Products
• Coffee, water, mints, and gum from Project 7
• Tees and Totes from Young Love Outfitters

Your generosity is healing the land and its people! For that, we are grateful.

This post has been re-blogged from Plant with Purpose. Click here, to view the post. Click here, to learn more about Plant with Purpose.

Earth Day 2012: Planting Trees is About People

In honor of Earth Day, we wanted to show the relationship between environmental solutions and humanitarian problems. In this featured article from Relevant Magazine, Aly Lewis, a staff writer for Plant with Purpose, tells us how Planting Trees is About People.

“I once asked a friend what part of social justice interested him.

‘The justice part,’ he responded, as his eyebrows narrowed and his chin dropped a few centimeters—just enough for him to look down his nose at me with all the condescension of the lawyer he would one day become. Obviously.

‘Why? What part interests you?’ he countered.

Had the question first been posed to me, I would have answered with illustrative stories about men’s and women’s lives being transformed, about reconciliation and restoration. I would have named people I knew—Godofredo, Teodora, Grey—whose testimonies make my work at a poverty-fighting organization worthwhile.

Prefaced with his dichotomous answer, though, I simply responded, ‘The social part.’

58: The Film

If you haven’t watched the trailer above, 58:The Film takes you on a journey through several different countries; it introduces you to a hungry and struggling mother and children in Ethiopia, two families enslaved by bonded labor in India, and into the distressed streets of Kenya and New York. The film not only shows the problems and devastations of extreme poverty, but also the good done to combat it. One positive example is an American man with a local community coffee shop selling Fair Trade coffee and promoting the end of global poverty. “These impatient revolutionaries and ordinary prophets present viewers with an empowering vision [to rise] up to its remarkable potential to end extreme poverty, by bringing God’s words through Isaiah to life in our time, in our day.”

Plant With Purpose

“Environmental Solutions to Humanitarian Problems”

Deforestation is a huge problem in the farmlands of some of the poorest countries on the planet. Deforestation is the removal of trees or forest which creates an unusable and a nutrient depleted soil. In places like the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Tanzania deforestation is making an impact. Although many of the farmers using this land have been doing the same practice for years, they still have yet to create successful ways to harvest their own land. In desperation to feed their families, they cut down the remaining trees which are protecting their soil to sell for firewood. Thus their crops are unsuccessful the following year and the disastrous cycle continues, while they continue to “depend on the environment for survival.”

In this unsuccessful cycle, Plant With Purpose comes to the rescue in 250 communities in six countries through its simple form of planting trees to end poverty. However, Plant With Purpose stands out amongst others, because they do not do the work entirely themselves. That may sound weird, however it actually makes more sense. Instead of sweeping into a foreign land and taking over, they harvest and work with locals “giving them solutions to many of their own problems when given more opportunity, access to resources, and appropriate coaching” and then those local volunteers go and lead their own villages. Those locals work alongside Plant With Purpose, each country providing “a full-time, in-country staff, all native to their respective countries” and knowledgable about their land.