One thing that I care a lot about and always try to do something about is the environment. I love nature and I love trees, and I think that there are three important things that can help to eliminate poverty: education, health and environmental protection and restoration.These three things are interconnected, so improving one will have a huge impact on the other.
We can’t have health if we live in a damaged environment, no matter how much we spend on medicine.
I already talked about deforestation in Ethiopia and how this impacts on the population and how important it is to reforest the land to end poverty and hunger.
Among many organizations working on that, there is one called Eden Reforestation Projects. It is different in some ways to others because it is working right there in Ethiopia with the community, so at the same time that is planting trees, local people are learning because they are working themselves on it.
Eden is working in two different sites, the Udo Escarpment and the Sidama Highlands.
The first one in the Udo Escarpment is near Lake Awasa in the Rift Valley of Ethiopia, where Eden Projects built nurseries to cultivate the trees that will be then used in the reforestation effort. They employ local people and then they not only create jobs but at the same time educate them to learn how later protect and manage the new forest.
You can see in the poster how the land has changed in just three years.
The second site in the Sidama Highlands started in 2007 with two new nurseries to provide the trees for the new project.
They made a beautiful video, which has won several prizes and tells the story from the point of view of Tesfaye, an Ethiopian man who is working in the reforestation project. Here is the complete video:

This video reminds me of a beautiful  animated short film based on a tale by Jean Giono, The man who planted trees. The story is about a shepherd who decided to restore a devastated valley planting tree by tree all by himself and over time improving the life of many people. If you have never seen it before, it’s worth watching. The short film was made in 1987 by Frédéric Back and lasts about 30 minutes and it was narrated in English by Christopher Plummer and in French by Philippe Noiret.
Click the picture below to open the link to the video. I saw it many years ago for the first time, but it will stay in my mind forever.

 
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