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| Last updated on August 15, 2008 |
SHI is building a global network of local partners working toward environmental, economic and social sustainability. SHI facilitates long-term collaboration among trained local staff, farmers and communities to implement sustainable land-use practices that alleviate poverty by restoring ecological stability.
Description:
Sustainable Harvest works with communities to address the issues of poverty and deforestation in the tropics. We are currently working with 900 families in 91 communities in Honduras, Belize, Nicaragua and Panama. We hire and train local staff to work side-by-side with farmers who have requested our assistance. We have planted 2 million trees, started more than 25 community loan funds, converted thousands of acres of degraded land to sustainable uses and saved over hundreds 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:
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779 North Bend Road
Surry, ME 04684
(See a map) |
Web Site: http://www.sustainableharvest.org
Directions:
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