Two truck loads totaling 10,000 trees went to the mountains of Saint Louis-du-Sud on land owned by a government official with much fertile land. This is an extraordinary opportunity for the region because they have organized the man power to take care of these trees long term. They are planting a variety of 10 species including Breadnut, Haitian Cedar, and Cacao. We give special thanks to ForestNation and CrowdStrike for sponsoring the growth of these trees in the nursery.
Skilled Konparet Bakers
Rosnie, Marie Maude, and other women on our nursery team are becoming experts in baking breadfruit konparet. We were able to put 60% breadfruit flour / 40% wheat flour in the recipe today, giving the konparet balanced and super-packed health benefits.
We’re making enough konparets to distribute to 15 schools in June. As you can see below, baking konparets has become easier for our team, but they need more tables because konparets should be spread out to dry more quickly and evenly. A $100 donation would allow our team to purchase a table and expand their work. Please use the button below to donate, and send an email to info@thehaititreeproject.org to let us know your donation is focused on the konparet table. Thank you!
10,000 Seedlings Ready To Go
Our nursery is packed with nearly 10,000 young seedlings right now. Our goal is to have these trees healthy and ready to be sent to homes by October. But our biggest challenge is financially providing long-term care for these seedlings.
Having steady money coming in through monthly donations support tracking each tree and paying each farmer to care for their survival through the dry season.
Currently, it would cost about $8,000 to add these trees to this pay-to-grow program. Right now we are regularly supporting nine farmers to grow young trees through this dry season, but we would like that number to be 900! Every donation supports our mission, and we’ll be launching our farmer sponsorship in the upcoming weeks to support farmers, their families, and the seedlings.
The Gift of Mangoes!
Thanks to a local magistrate, we’re now able to add mango trees to our list of new growth for the fall rains. A $40 donation brings 240 mangos to the nursery, and once the mangoes are in, we invite locals to enjoy them. Of course, the children get to eat first, and they eat mango until their bellies are full and sometimes sore. Everyone drops off the seed pods and we gather as much as we can to prepare for soil planting.
Beyond growing mango trees, we also want to take advantage of all the mature mango trees and the fruit they're already providing. Throughout the years, we've seen mangos come into season, mangos fall and rot on the ground, then a month later we see locals struggling to find enough rich natural nutritious food. So our next goal is to start preserving mangoes before they rot, and add mango slices to our all-natural shop.
Thanks to our partnership with Trees That Feed Foundation, we've been gifted a commercial-grade food processor to cut perfectly thin mango slices. We're also building a solar dehydrator that can dry hundreds of mango slices at once.
This is going to be huge for adding more jobs and income throughout our nursery. We should be receiving these by the end of the month, and we're hoping you could pitch in with a one-time donation. These are our current fund needs:
Transporting these machines across Haiti - $150
Cement foundation for the dehydrator - $300
Secure fencing around the dehydrator - $200
10,000 Trees Need Bags
Help us fill these bags! While we have enough steady income from donors now to support a few workers, we still don’t have enough to purchase valuable seeds for all these bags. Many are filled with sed trees and Rosnie has put cashew in some as well, but we need more donations to buy mango seeds and many other more expensive seasonal fruits. If we don’t get more support soon, we will have to only produce a few hardwood trees for the fall. Spread the word about the work we are doing!
Breadfuit Update! Our First Customer
Breadfruits are falling from the trees, and for the first time, the locals in our region are “catching” them. Now that we have a mill, word has spread all the way to Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince (PaP) about our new shop and services.
Thanks to our team’s hard work and word of mouth, our team has its first buyer! Someone from PaP ordered 100 pounds of breadfruit flour to sell in their store. This has increased the demand for the fruit, and locals are “catching” and cutting their breadfruit in tiny slivers with knives and graters, drying them, and then grinding the dried pieces in our mill for shipment to PaP.
One of our missions is to create self-sustainability in Haiti, and we’re happy to see people bringing in their own income from the breadfruit flour. When I go to Haiti, in late summer, even though the trees have little to give, I won’t see hungry people because they will have ground breadfruit flour and saved.
I need your help to spread the word and educate people on how to make use of the mill to create a healthy diet year-round. From breadfruit, cacao, peanuts, and corn, to yucca root flour, our mill will allow people to conserve more food than ever before during the dry summer season.
Gifting Konparet and Trees
On May 2 and 3 we gave out trees and konparets to schools Ecole Mixte Frere Bobo de la Hatte, and Ecole Ket Colombier. It's been hard trying to find the perfect material to keep them sanitary, so we wrapped them in paper. This is our easiest option for avoiding environmental waste, and not adding plastic waste into the environment, especially since there aren’t any landfills. We’re always open to more suggestions and ideas? Maybe a compostable paper?
Thanks to Trees that Feed Foundation for providing the funds we needed to produce and distribute konparets to over 750 students and adults along with cacao and cashew trees. Our local Doctor Yvra Oreste and volunteer THTP motivator spoke to the children and parents about the importance of agroforestry in maintaining year-round nutrition.
Our motorcycle is doing well and working hard. We’re working hard to regularly distribue trees to schools this week.
Haitian Agriculture and Labor Day: Trees For Children
May 1st is Agriculture and Labor Day in Haiti. And on this day, it’s tradition to give children trees. Families visitied local public school in La Sikri to celebrate and talk about all the natural products that are part of Haiti’s rich history.
We gave out over 300 trees today, and most were cacao and cashew because they’re in the season. Several local professionals and agronomists gave speeches about improving life quality through agroforestry. And they also discussed their future vision for the environment and agriculture in the region.
Rosnie and Konparet
Rosnie is measuring the weight of konparet bread for customers. It’s a complicated process. She needs to figure out how much each bread will weigh, how much to sell them for, and how much the materials will cost.
Will they end up making a profit? Well, for now, Trees That Feed is generously allowing us to make these baked goods and give them to schools along with information on the importance of konparet. Then once the area is familiar with the importance of breadfruit flour in foods, we hope it’ll increase interest, allowing the business to take off.
Expanding Our Mission: Konparet For Schoolchildren
Forty-two fresh pounds of konparets were baked today. Were planning to visit fifteen local schools over the next month to distribute konparets to the schoolchildren, who will also take them home and share them with their families.
Education is always the first step in our mission, so whenever we give out large amounts of plants, konparets, or other crops, we provide seminars on nutrition and the importance of eating locally, especially from trees.
Sharing the benefits of konparet, along with a sample will help us promote the health and possible financial benefits of baking konparet on a larger scale. But first we need to select women leaders who will manage the business. Within the next few months, we’re planning to create 20 small businesses for selling konparet. More importantly, as konparet starts to sell and expand in use to local communities, and as we continue growing cash crops, our business owners will be able to take on new ventures in other fruits, foods, and even their own personal crafts.
Thank you Trees That Feed for all the support you have given so far in this great endeavor to bring more tree products into Haiti's local economy.
