Haiti Friends’ Leadership Brunch:
THE PITTSBURGH GOLF CLUB
5280 Northumberland St,
Pittsburgh, PA 15217
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 14th2018
BRUNCH FOR THE TREES
11:30 am - 2:30 pm
Fall inspired food and cocktails will be served in the historic clubhouse
BUY TICKETS HERE
On behalf of the Board of the Haiti Friends, I am pleased to extend an invitation for you to join the Haiti Friends Leadership Committee for 2018.Thanks to contributors like you we have accomplished a lot in Haiti over the last thirteen years through our Haiti Timber Re-Introduction Program (HTRIP). Now we are seeing a cycle of sustainability emerging.
Since the conception of HTRIP, sustainability has always been central to its concept. We saw an opportunity for economic growth in Haiti through implementing environmentally sustainable agricultural practices. We developed an educational hands-on model in 2005 to teach agroforestry practices to farmers who live on subsistence farming in the rural mountainous regions of Haiti. We work in a region where resources are scarce and the effects of decades of environmentally unsound agricultural practices and natural disasters have left large regions deforested and nutrient depleted. By reintroducing timber into the mountainsides, terracing the land, and building up the topsoil, we are helping farmers diversify their crops, extend growing seasons, and improve yields. This has resulted in better household incomes, greater social mobility, and healthier families.
The vision for HTRIP was always for farmers to participate in larger agricultural social enterprises. By implementing sustainable farming practices, rural farmers are able to produce higher volumes of higher valued agricultural products. One of those products is the highly valued timber trees the farmers are planting, such as mahogany, oak, and cedar. Now after 13 years some of the earliest participants of the HTRIP program are seeing their trees reach maturity and are able to selectively harvest some. This is having a very positive economic impact on farming households. These trees are being harvested sustainably and when trees are harvested new trees are planted completing a cycle of sustainability.
Over the last 13 years we have been teaching restoration practices to farmers, slowing of erosion through the creation of rock walls, adding compost to improve top soil, and along the rock walls farmers planted trees stabilizing hillsides. As the trees mature, farmers plant higher value shade crops that flourish under the canopy of trees. We have now worked with more than 8,000 people who have collectively planted more than 3 million trees. At this scale it is having a transformative effect.
You, as members of the Leadership Committee of Haiti Friends, are the champions of these trees that make life better in Haiti. We invite you to come celebrate the trees with us at a Sunday Brunch. Board President Lucy Rawson will host the Friends’ annual Leadership party by inviting you to join her at the Pittsburgh Golf Club in Squirrel Hill.
BUY TICKETS HERE
Proceeds Support Haiti Friends’
Haiti Timber Re-Introduction Program (HTRIP)
Enjoy Complimentary Food and Cocktails