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Last month, we joined our Christie Community Foundation project partners in Sudan and drove seven hours through the desert to visit the site of our Village Reforestation and Restoration Project.
As you may know, over the past 20 years the deserts throughout Northern Africa have been expanding at an alarming rate. During our trip we witnessed the stark realities of this rapid deterioration as we walked through villages now buried under sand and tripped across stumps of trees in once-forested areas.
There is little left of the flora that once covered the region and the remaining strips of cultivable land narrow year by year. We kept asking ourselves, “How do the people here do it?”
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon calls desertification (desert creep) a root cause of the Darfur crisis, transforming already-trying living conditions into impossible ones. With natural resources drying up - coupled with racial tensions, politics, and greed - conflict was inevitable.

What We Can Do
In order to ease the conflict over resources and re-establish self-sufficiency in these regions, massive replanting needs to take place.
The Village Reforestation and Restoration Project is focused around planting a windbreak of indigenous trees several miles long to stop the encroaching desert's soil erosion and restore arable land. This windbreak, in conjunction with a series of water pumps and irrigation systems, will allow large areas to be cultivated, providing the means for villagers to thrive again through the sale of crops, medicinal herbs and honey produced by bees used to cross-pollinate the plant-life.
Piloting this venture in Darfur is too dangerous at this time. We've therefore chosen a Northern Sudanese hamlet as the project's first village. The project village lies deep in the desert and exhibits much of the same topography and challenges found in most arid Darfur regions. The similarities between the regions will make replication to Darfur relatively easy when the time comes. Also, our project's co-creator is a member of the Darfur Repatriation Commission. This puts us in a very strong position to bring reforestation to Darfur to assist the refugees when they return to their homes.
In addition to the agricultural component of the project, we also identified a tremendous need for books - 20 children share 3 books in a village classroom - so we are adding a library component for the village school and also plan to provide solar-powered computers. And, to protect the new trees being planted, solar cookers will be supplied to the villagers to reduce the use of firewood and utilize the region's tremendous potential for solar power.
In getting to know the people in the pilot village, we experienced first-hand the Sudanese commitment to community and family. Indeed this commitment to each other has been the means by which they’ve survived. As we arrived back in the US during Thanksgiving week, we were reminded about how the Pilgrims endured their first winters in the New World - by relying on each other and upon the generosity of their Native American neighbors.
The more we learn and experience, the more we’ve realized how our nation, our species, our planet will only flourish if we band together as a community - as a world community - to solve the large challenges we face whether they be financial crises, ending genocide, choosing peace and tolerance over war and fear, or reversing climate change.
We are very excited about this opportunity and its considerable ramifications for Northern Africa. This project will serve as a model for replication throughout Sudan now, and specifically Darfur when the refugees are able to return to their homes.

Please help us help the people of Sudan restore their lives.
Your tax-deductible contribution will go a long way.
www.AidStillRequired.org/donate

Thank you,
Hunter & Andrea
PS Kindly forward this note to those you think would be interested.