Andrew and Joel

Ms. Jones' classImages taken from The Rainforest Alliance

http://www.rainforest-alliance.org

What we can do when we’re back

Lo que podemos hacer cuando regresemos

When Joel and Andrew return from their rainforest work, their job has really just begun. They plan to produce persuasive videos to raise money, schedule awareness raising events, and work with manufacturers in our town to work with suppliers in the Mayan Biosphere Zone.

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One final appeal

By giving Joel and Andrew the travel scholarship, you will be doing more than giving us a once-in-a-lifetime learning experience. You will be:

Helping save the rainforest

Helping span the gap between cultures

Furthering understanding of deforestation, and

Making the world a healthier, happier place

Thank you for this opportunity!

Tel:

Our proposed trip to Guatemalanuestro viaje propuesto a Guatemala

By Andrew and Joel

Rainforest management works. Help us carry that message across the border into Mexico and beyond!

La gestión forestal es eficaz. Ayúdanos a llevar ese mensaje a través de la frontera con México y más allá!

Joel, Andrew, and the rest of Ms. Jones’ class have enjoyed being part of the Adopt-a-Rainforest project. Our rainforest, near the San Pedro River in Guatemala’s Petén region, is in the “Mayan Biosphere Zone,” a model of how governments can

h manage important rainforests. And more than just learning about the environment, we have gotten to know its people. Though they speak Spanish and look a bidifferent, they are just like us!

We have communicated with students in the San Miguel school there, and they have shared specific needs that Joel and Andrew want to help them with

on our ten day trip. How will we help them? In three ways: our trip will allow us to learn about de-forestation, work for the rainforest, share our cultures to share their culture with the rest of the US so that more people can leann about and support this important work.

Why are we needed? Por qué son necesarios?

To work for the rainforest’s future

Para trabajar por el futuro de la selvaWe are excited about working in the school’s plant nursery. It will get us close to the valuable plants students are helping preserve from the burning that poachers and illegal foragers are perpetrating. Both Joel and Andrew are ready to work long hours helping get the plants ready for reforestation. We know that we will be asked to “collect allspice and xate palm leaves (used by florists in the United States), cut vines and weave them into wicker furniture, and selectively log mahogany trees, selling the lumber and keeping the twigs and leaves to fertilize the forest floor,” as the project desription puts it.

To learn about and share culture para compartir nuestra cultura y

aprender sobre ellosWe are so excited to learn about the region’s history, with its roots deep in the ancient Mayan culture of the Petén region. According to The Rainforest Alliance, “this rugged, densely forested region of northern Guatemala … the birthplace of the Maya civilization, which flourished for more than 1,000 years throughout what is now Central America.

To learn about deforestation

Para apprender sobre deforestaciónIt is one thing to learn about deforestation out of a science text: it is so much more powerful to learn about it by walking in it and working with it. Among the experts at the Mayan Biosphere Zone are professors from the University of Guatemala who will help us understand the intricate balance of nature in the rainforest. We will be able to learn from the men and women who struggle to make the biosphere zone something people in Mexico can envy and emulate. And by actually seeing the results on endangered species like the howler monkey and the jaguar, We will come back with a personal understanding of climate change, and the importance of environmental equilibrium.