Seed It Forward activity report in 2016

2016 in numbers:

• ~300 people engaged
• ~2,500 trees planted in various localities (vil. Elizavetovca, vil. Todiresti, vil. Coacaza Rosie / Ohrincea, vil. Chiscareni, vil. Bubuieci, vil. Riscova, Singerei and Chisinau)
• unknown, but huge amount of seeds gathered
• ~3000 seeds planted directly and into the tree nurseries

More details below:

Activities in 2016:

• Planting 450 hazelnut trees with 20 volunteers in village Elizavetovca, Ungheni district – March 12, 2016 (details)

• Planting ~130 willows on river Ciuluc, Singerei district, and on river Raut, Criuleni district – April 5-9, 2016 (details)

• Developing a general Planting Guide and a Willow-Planting Guide

• Monitoring and caring activities (“Our willows four months later”, “Bubuieci in August”, etc.)

• Launching the Solar Food Dehydrator project – June 2016 (details)

• Launching the Carbon Footprint Offset project – June/September 2016 (details)

• Organizing first working picnics in Bubuieci (details)

• Visiting, for the first time, Natural Reservation Codrii – September 17, 2016 (details)

• First interactive presentation of the initiative: “From Seeds to Dried Fruits” – September 24, 2016 in Eco-Village Moldova (details)

• Participating in an Erasmus+ course “Grow Roots In The Countryside” – a great exchange of experience in Asturias, Spain; October 4-11, 2016 (details)

• First official participation and fundraising at IarmarEco-2016 event – the Fair of Ecological Opportunities and Social Entrepreneurship – October 16, 2016 (details)

• Starting work on the concept of the campaign against burning fallen leaves – October 2016 (details)

• Effectuating inventory and repair of most of our tools – March and October-November 2016

• Planting ~700 trees (robinia, sycamore maple and ash trees) with ~100 volunteers in order to fight massive land degradation process in village Riscova, Criuleni district – November 5, 2016 (details)

• Planting 31 poplars along the stadium in village Riscova, Criuleni district – November 6, 2016 (details)

• Organizing the second Planting Good Deeds in Moldova/Bubuieci action – planting a live hedge of 570 trees and bushes with 54 volunteers – November 19, 2016 (details)

• Starting an Open Tree Nursery in Bubuieci – October 2016 (details)

• Launching the process of direct seeding, also in Bubuieci – December 2016 (details)

• Organizing first learning excursions to our planting sites

• Planting a small walnut orchard for our friends in village Riscova, Criuleni district – November 30th – December 4th, 2016 (details)

• Launching the project “Tree is the best present” – planting trees in honour of our friend’s mother’s birthday – December 25, 2016 in Bubuieci

• Gathering / receiving as presents / buying a few tens of kilos / thousands of trees and bushes’ seeds: oak (red oak, pedunculate oak and sessile oak), many types of hazelnuts (from Moldova and Spain), Turkish hazelnuts, walnut, white walnut, black walnut, Japanese walnut, pecan, ginkgo, sycamore, birch, elm, poplar, sophora japonica, chestnut, bird cherry, amorpha fruticosa, thuija, cape gooseberry, maples (sycamore maple, ash-leaved maple, Norway maple), Eastern redbud, Judas tree, Russian olive, European bladdernut, spindle, ash, beech, honey locust, apple, plum, apricot, linden, dog rose, etc. etc.

• Continuing cooperation with Eco-Village Moldova, “Dulce Plai”, Art-Labyrinth, Plantam fapte bune in Romania, WikiWoods, StarNet, UNDP Moldova, and Sasha Nikitin,

• Beginning cooperation with Mitoc Group, Moore Stephens KSC – MD, Academia Nicolae Dumitrescu, CAUX – Initiatives of Change, MitOst, Theodor-Heuss-Kolleg, MEGA and American Language Center

• Growing the team – from 4 to 8 people (though one person left to follow his own path), and “recruiting” an experienced forest engineer (details)

Plans for 2017:

• Continuing development of all of our projects
• More small, but diverse events
• A spring dedicated to completion of existing planting sites, personal plantings and extra work on the tree nurseries
• Possibly, applying for some grants – not too large, but able to enhance our activities
• …

Looking forward to doing something together again!

And if you like or hate something, or find that we missed an important point, do tell!

Your Seed It Forward team

Photo credit: Gabriela Isac, Sasha Nikitin, Liliana Botnaru, Sebastian Wehrsig.