A couple of months ago on my last trip to Haiti I visited with the HTRIP staff at the central nursery in Deschapelles. Here under the shade of flamboyant branches thousands of seeds sprout out of small recycled plastic bags. This is one of several nurseries we have in Haiti. Dispersed among the nurseries we have more than 400,000 seedlings sprouting before we distribute them for planting among the 2015 graduates of the HTRIP program. May 1st we had our graduation with more than 1,000 graduates.

Here we mix soil and compost which we use to fill recycled water bags for seed germination.

Here we sift the dirt through a screen to remove rocks and break up large chunks.

we also germinate certain varieties in elevated boxes like this one.

We amass thousands of bags with rich soil and place seeds we collected from the end of the previous season.

Over time the seedlings sprout and when they are ready we distribute them among our participants who plant them on their land. Our technicians continue to work with participant communities for the following 10 years tracking the growth and health of the trees. We are now in our 9th year and have more than 2,000,000 trees planted. Each are accounted for and are monitored and studied.