Good Morning TREES Members and Friends of the Organization,

We made some changes to our e-blast service that took slightly longer than anticipated, so we are combining our June and July e-newsletters.  We will return to sending monthly e-newsletters in August. 

On June 5, 1972 the UN established World Environment Day to provoke worldwide awareness of the environment and enhance political attention and public action. This year, the theme for the 38th annual World Environment Day reflects the urgent need for both nations and individuals to take earnest and collaborative action to reduce the threat of climate change and overcome poverty through improved forest management and reforestation projects. TREES has been practicing this for well over 20 years, but we know that there is a lot more to be done.   Read more...

Hot News

• News from the Field
  Timote Georges featured as Discovery Channel "EcoHero"
  Major Update to TREES GPS monitoring
  Sharing Across Borders in Senegal and the Gambia
  Updates from Kenya:
     Kiangondu Environmental Network 
     Rongo River Conservation Group
• Art for Africa and a Concert for Trees!
• Thank You to Our Plant-a-Tree Partners
• TREES Project Pictures on FLICKR
• TREES is on Skype

Kerr Nrogyan, Gambia
Amadou Ndowe filling tree sacks in
the community nursery

Some of the amazing artwork auctioned at the Art for Africa Event

News from the Field
Timote Georges Featured as Discovery Channel EcoHero
Trees for the Future's Haiti program was recently featured in an educational documentary by the Discovery Institute.  The deforestation portion of their 8-part series on the environment showcased TREES Haiti Coordinator Timote Georges as an "EcoHero" due to his tireless grassroots efforts that are yielding solutions to Haiti’s desperate environmental situation.  They followed Timote to the community of Leogane, where TREES Haiti is engaged in a major reforestation project.  The program will be aired soon and we will let you know when we have more specific information.  To learn more about our Haiti program, including the work in Leogane, go to www.plant-trees.org/projects/haiti.htm

Discovery Channel’s Global Education Partnership is a project that brings teacher training, technology and a DVD library of custom made programs to schools around the world - mostly in Africa and South America.  They started by customizing Discovery Channel shows for a school-age audience and have since developed into an entity that communicates directly with the schools in their regions and tailors production to their needs.   You can find out more about Global Education at www.discoveryglobaled.org.

Major Update to TREES GPS Monitoring
We have now provided GPS units and digital cameras to the project leaders in all of our major country programs, and we are receiving great pictures from our partners, showing nurseries, village projects, and outplanting sites.  We are using Google Earth as a platform to showcase this work.

After installing Google Earth on your computer, you can download a small file that will allow you to see satellite imagery of these points, with ground photos and descriptions.  It is a great tool and also is a lot of fun.  Click here to go to our project monitoring page, where you can download the file and see for yourself!

Sharing Across Borders in Senegal and the Gambia
This week a few Peace Corps Volunteers in the Gambia, together with their Gambian farming counterparts, are visiting Trees for the Future’s project in Senegal in order to learn from the successes of Technician Omar Ndao’s work.  TREES has been working with the Gambian Peace Corps volunteers over the past year to develop a tree planting project with 5 villages in the Jokadu district of the North Bank.  So far the Gambia project has shown a lot of success and farmers in the different villages are currently establishing tree nurseries for the upcoming rainy season.

Over the course of the week, the visitors from the Gambia will join Omar and Senegal Peace Corps volunteers to visit TREES projects in Kaffrine.  They will learn how to develop successful community level tree planting and sustainable gardening projects.  The information and experience they gain during the visit will be brought back to the Gambia to be incorporated in their own program.  It’s an excellent example of the possible cross-country collaboration of Trees for the Future Programs, in which a model in one country can be applied to the development of a program in another country.

Updates from Kenya: Kiangondu Environmental Network Group
Paulino Damiano Mugendi, TREES Kenya Technician, has been working with the Kiangondu Environmental Network Group, which is located in Chukka Area in the Mery South District of Kenya. We are excited about this partnership because their devotion to restoring degraded lands is truly impressive - they have planted over three million trees on the slopes of Mount Kenya. In addition, the group includes a range of village members; men and women, young and old.  TREES has supplied a range of seeds for the group's efforts, from Leucaena leucocephala to Grevillea robusta and Khaya anthotheca, and Paulino is conducting workshops on agroforestry techniques and providing advice on reforestation best practices.

Updates from Kenya: Rongo River Conservation Group
Every year extensive amounts of topsoil are washed away in Southwestern Kenya, eventually ending up in Lake Victoria, Africa's largest lake.  The topsoil is crucial to the livelihoods of millions of East Africans. Extensive erosion is causing large scale environmental degradation of Lake Victoria due to unprecedented pollution and fertilizers reaching the lake. In addition, because the topsoil is washed away every rainy season, the land has become much less productive which could lead to future food shortages.

The Rongo River Conservation Group is working with local farmers around Rongo, Kenya to reduce soil erosion through agroforestry techniques and to help save Lake Victoria and improve agricultural production. TREES is providing seeds and monetary assistance to Caleb Omolo - the founder and leader of the Rongo River Conservation Group. With these seeds he has established nurseries with species such as Calliandra calothyrsus.  These trees will be planted along earth mounds that divert water from areas of extensive erosion towards kitchen gardens.  These gardens will provide a reliable supply of vegetables for much of the year. David will soon travel to Rongo to conduct workshops with the community to further improve their agroforestry techniques to reduce land degradation and improve food production.  You can see pictures of the work in Rongo on flickr by clicking here


Art for Africa and a Concert for Trees!
On May 31st Trees for the Future hosted its first annual Silent Art Auction to benefit our Greener Africa programs. With the help of artists from the Jackson Art Center, volunteers from the Church of the Redeemer & River Road Unitarian Congregation and you, we raised over five thousand dollars! Thank you to all who attended and helped make the event possible! We look forward to next year's exciting event.

TREES also recently benefited from two concerts performed by the Washington Metropolitan Philharmonic. The theme of each composition was "trees" and half of all the proceeds went to support Trees for the Future. The music, which included Ottorino Respighi's "The Pines of Rome;" Jaromir Weinberger's "Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree;" Jennifer Higdon's "River Sings a Song to the Trees;" and Jean Pascal Beintus' "The Butterfly Tree" was beautiful and inspiring. We would like to thank the Washington Metropolitan Philharmonic and everyone who attended these concerts for their support!

Keep checking our e-blast and website for more local events and/or events in your area!


Thank You to Our Plant-A-Tree Partners
Jenny Deller, has made it one step closer to the big screen with her powerful independent film Future Weather about a child’s response to climate crisis. You can be part of the grassroots movement to get this message to the world by clicking here and voting 5 stars for FUTURE WEATHER.

Holistic Movement Center is a yoga community in Morro Bay, CA. They just went live with their new website The Yoga Club—visit this site, become a member, and plant some trees too! Thanks to these folks and to all of our wonderful friends throughout the global yoga community for their passionate support.

Our Plant-A-Tree Partners are integral to the work we do. Many of our tree planting projects around the world would not be possible without their support. For this reason, please take a moment to look at our partnerships page. These folks offer countless products, services and more, so please visit their sites to see what they offer.


TREES Pictures on FLICKR
TREES has an incredible range of pictures from the past 30 years and as we distribute more cameras and GPS units to our field representatives, we are receiving more than ever before. We are working hard to put our best pictures from all of our project areas online. You can see our pictures by going to http://www.flickr.com/photos/plant-trees/sets/ (no logins or passwords needed).  Enjoy and share with your friends!


TREES is on SKYPE
Our international friends and partners will be happy to know that TREES can be called for free using SKYPE. Our skype name is treesftf - call us!

Jamoon (Eugenia jambolana) seed ready for distribution in India	Nursery in Quatbare, Ethiopia	David Tye helps to plant a seedling in the Obwoyo Theatre Group's Tree Nursery Site, Kiogoro Village