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OUR OWN STORY  They had put too much of their land into cash      cultivo
                                                                    crop (n.):
              crops like coffee and tea, and the children were     disease (n.)
              suffering from diseases associated with              enfermedad
              malnutrition. “Why not plant trees?” I asked the women.
              “Let’s plant trees.” And the women said, “Well, we would
              plant trees, but we don’t know how.” And that started the
              whole story of “Yeah, ok, let’s learn how to plant trees.”


              And we called the foresters, they came in and        forester (n.):
              they talked to the women. They did not really        guardabosques
              see why I was trying to teach the women how to
              plant trees, they said that to plant a tree you need a diploma.
              I said, “Well, I don’t think you need a diploma to plant a tree.”


              ¡Initially, we tried to give
              them seeds and then we
              decided against it. We
              said, “If we give them
              seeds, they will become
              dependent on us.” We
              said, “If you plant a tree
              and the tree survives,
              the movement will
              compensate you with
              a very small amount of
              money, the amount of 4
              US cents for a tree that
              survives. And so, they just
              started very, very, very
              small, very, very small.
              And before too long, they
              started showing each
              other how to plant trees.
              And before we knew it,
              they just started working
              with me.
                                seed (n.):
                                semilla


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