Re-Forestation Project

Greetings!
We (Columbia Basin Permaculture) have allied ourselves with Dr Mariam Raqib's "Afghanistan Samsortya" organization in an epic guild of complementary goals, skills, and intentions.
Our (CBP) focus is dry-climate Permaculture .... Mariam's org is focused on re-vitalizing the (destroyed) forests of Afghanistan as well as re-establishing household orchards and family stands of support and production trees. Just so happens that Afghanistan is a dry climate. Further, the people there are very interested in learning about Permaculture ideas and techniques ... conversely we are very interested in learning the traditional methods, plants, and techniques that prior to the Soviet invasion, served as sources of food and employment for a majority of the population. We're seeing a productive exchange of information here as well as combining forces to do some much-needed reforestation work.

Specifically, Mariam is conducting a drive to help fund the 2014 Afghan Tree Project which intends to expand the existing nursery near Jalalabad, increase education and participation by women who perform as mothers and caretakers of extended families, propagate 100,000 tree saplings of numerous varieties, and continue to distribute trees to families and begin planting the surrounding hillsides. We wrote an article about this effort here: http://permaculturenews.org/2013/12/04/re-foresting-afghanistan/. It was our good fortune to have this article re-posted on exopermaculture.com and resilience.org ... a "three-fer"!

We are using this published article as our "splash" into the tough world of crowdfunding (see 2014 Afghan Tree Project) and attempting to ride the "ripples" from these online posts. Our thinking is that the more "eyes on" the article and indiegogo campaign we can get, the more contributions we'll ultimately receive.

Therefore, we would like to ask for your funding help, or if that's not possible, at least throw some weight behind this very worthwhile project by "liking" it on Facebook and even Google+ or Twitter. Just the act of a "Like" or repost will help to get an increasing number of "eyes on" and help that ripple effect to spread further without petering-out. Thanks for any impetus you can help provide!
= )
Bill/Will Kearns
Columbia Basin Permaculture

It's a truly awesome project - I really am inspired by her work.

I was in Afghanistan in 2004 and one of the things that left an impression on me was the vast desolation cause by overgrazing and lack of concern for the natural environment. It is more than welcome for me to hear a story of someone who wants to change that.

Thank you both Jennifer and Amedean for replying and adding your support to this project. Out here in Eastern Washington we really tried to follow the principal of observation when approaching the initial design of our property. It has taken two years of research and experimentation to begin to understand the complexities of the climate, alkaline water, alkaline soil and very low precip, strong winds, blazing sun & cold winters (4o right now) and how they play into our design. Meeting Mariam and opening a weekly dialog to discuss successes and failures has been very helpful. Knowing another community on the other side of the world that shares our climate classification is invaluable.

80% of the population in Afghanistan has been farming for centuries. Their cultural approach to learning has always been hands on multi-generational which has put them way ahead of us - our "family" for now has primarily been Google searches and forum info. I joked with Mariam that we are jealous that they are growing figs (Jalalabad is more like Phoenix) and we're limited until we get the earth ship green house up.

Either way it still feels good to be a part of the (Pc) group that focuses on making the problem the solution.

cheers!

Sheila