Sustainable Harvest International

Sustainable Harvest International (SHI) provides farming families in Central America with the training and tools to overcome poverty while restoring our planet's tropical forests.

Description:
Central America has lost more than half of its rainforests in the last 50 years, contributing to mass extinctions and global warming. Rainforest destruction also wreaks havoc on local populations who depend on the rainforest for their survival.

The mission of Sustainable Harvest International (SHI) is to provide farming families in Central America with the training and tools to overcome poverty while restoring our planet's tropical forests. The 48 members of SHI's Central American staff have worked with more than 1,800 families in over 120 communities to implement sustainable land-use practices that alleviate poverty while restoring the environment. More than 600 families have graduated from the SHI program and no longer need assistance. Since the organization's start in 1997, SHI has planted more than 2.3 million trees and converted thousands of acres to sustainable uses; thereby saving tens of thousands of acres of tropical forest from slash-and-burn destruction.

History:
While serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Panama in the early 1990's, Florence Reed learned that tropical deforestation has a tragic human component. Desperate farmers longed for practical training to protect local forests and restore degraded lands. Not only concerned with increased agricultural yields, these farmers also wanted to leave a healthy ecosystem for future generations. Reed extensively researched sustainable alternatives to slash-and-burn farming during her Peace Corp tenure. Together, Reed and the Panamanian farmers met with considerable success in implementing these practices.
Upon her return, Reed sought to build upon the tremendous potential to create significant and permanent change throughout Central America. In Honduras, she met with a group of villages that wanted to implement sustainable techniques. Reed cultivated interest in the project among a group of concerned university professors, small business owners, a member of the New Hampshire Belize teachers' exchange, and non-profit executives. They formed a Board of Directors and Sustainable Harvest International was incorporated as a nonprofit, 501(c)(3) organization in May 1997. By then, SHI's first two extensionists had begun work in rural Honduras.
Since 1997, SHI has expanded its reach from the one program in Honduras to also include programs in Panama, Belize and most recently, Nicaragua. SHI thus demonstrates its commitment to implement a program through which Central Americans take responsibility for reversing environmental degradation and achieving economic viability in their own countries.

Contact person: Sarah Kennedy, Outreach Director, (phone), (email)

Office fax number: (207) 669-8255

Address:

779 North Bend Road Surry, ME 04684 (See a map)

Web Site: http://www.sustainableharvest.org

Directions:

Our office in Surry is on North Bend Road. The office is 779 (the number is on the mail box). It is a two-story white farm house with attached garage. Please call for more specific directions.

Last updated on February 25, 2009