Roland Fernández is a producer from the Bajo Naranjillo native community in the Soritor River Annex, and is a promoter of that community’s committee.

“I found out about the project when some groups were working in my community and I wanted to join them and plant trees to reforest my community, but they would not let me. I talked this over with Practical Action and now we are working with them. I must say that had it not been for an institution like Practical Action, we would not be planning trees and we would know nothing about deforestation.

“Through Practical Action, the Cloud Forests project made a proposal to come and teach us all about reforestation, coffee farms and how to plant different varieties of trees. That is the Cloud Forests project, but it is through the NGO Practical Action that the native communities received assistance. I thought the project’s activities were fantastic and I was also amazed, because no other institution had helped us before and they provided training. I thought it was an excellent programme, as we all learned things we knew nothing about before, such as how to plant trees and how to deal with plagues. Now we know all about so many different things. While we were working with Practical Action, our partners gave each promoter plants, a machete, a digger, a wheelbarrow, seedbeds, tents and everything we needed. This made our groups and our partners very happy because we had never worked in this way before.

“I had been interested in reforesting before, because I think it is in everyone’s interest, but I personally like it because I am doing something good for my community, for my children some day and for my family. That is encouraging because I feel that by reforesting trees of different species, I am doing something for a better life. The species of trees we are planting are Indian cedar, mahogany shaina, capirona and other species. In my farm, more than 80% of the trees are Indian cedar, which have already grown as tall as 6 or 7 metres. We also learned how to prune coffee, how to plant trees, how to leave an appropriate distance between them and what species we should plant in our farms. As we are already adults and time is going by, we will be leaving the benefits for our children and it will be up to them what they do. So it is our family and our children who will benefit and that is what we had in mind when we undertook the reforestation.

“I am grateful to Practical Action for all their help and hope we can continue working together for the wellbeing of my community.”