Youth from Preda Children's Home together with Indigenous People plant trees at the mountains of Cabangan.
In this age of global warming and the resulting change in our climate it is essential that we do more to protect the environment and reduce the amount of CO2 in our atmosphere. Preda working with the indigenous people of Zambales helps to protect their ancestral domain and to strengthen there rights by improving the lands. These have been logged out and deforested by corrupt and unscrupulous logger – politicians in past years. This causes landslides, loss of top soil, river and sea pollution and adds to global warming. Thanks to Preda Fair Trade working as equal partners with the indigenous people the planting of trees has expanded. The people are now empowered, educated and trained to claim their land rights and reforest with the help of Preda fair trade.
Last week 22 August 2009, another PREDA Fair trade sponsored tree planting campaign took off in the mountains of Cabangan, Zambales. It was participated by 35 persons compose of PREDA clients, AKBAY, volunteer and the Aeta indigenous peoples (IP’s) of Casabaan Aeta Settlers Association (CASA) community in Cabangan including 8 of the PREDA assisted IP HS-College scholars. The group took less than 2 hours journey from PREDA Center in Olongapo City up to Cabangan including a 20 minute mountain trekking going to the planting site.
The land area which is intended as a homestead for the CASA community is a 30-hectare slightly sloping terrain situated within the 5,000 hectare Ancestral Land (CADC042) of the Aetas of Cabangan. The tribal council members led the clearing of the area and took them 6 days to establish a 5 meter wide contour and measure the exact planting distance. Before planting, the group did a short orientation and clearly explained the purpose and objective of PREDA Fair Trade tree planting project. Limay Dimain, Sr., Chieftain of CASA, also explained on the proper care and management of planting the saplings. The group planted 80 mango saplings out of 200 that PREDA provided for the CASA members and the IP’s will continue to plant the remaining saplings as well as integrating various crops such as banana, gabi and vegetables.
Every year, PREDA Fair Trade is providing a thousand saplings of grafted carabao mango variety that promotes environmental protection and soil erosion control to the Aeta ancestral lands. This will not only contribute to saving the depleting environment but also to improve the livelihood of the indigenous peoples in the next five years by reaping the good harvest from the bearing mango trees. “Nobody will cut a mango tree”, instead they will take good care of the tree until such time that they could enjoy the benefits themselves and pass on to the next generation.
