Basic HTML Version
PROVIDING OPPORTUNITIES TO YOUNG PEOPLE WHO WANT TO
MAKE A DIFFERENCE
EARTH alumna sets out to plant the future
of Guatemala one tree at a time
Yanira plants trees with her daughter during
EARTH Plants the Future.
In the small town of San Benito, along the border with the Maya
Biosphere Reserve in the Petén department of northern Guatemala,
EARTH alumna Yanira Aguayo Colón (’02, Guatemala) has established
herself as a force for change in her community. In spite of her petite
stature and calm demeanor, Yanira’s persistence and leadership led to
the planting of 377,000 trees in this fragile community as part of
EARTH’s global tree-planting event,
EARTH Plants the Future
.
“Our idea at the beginning was just to plant a small amount of trees
with our kids. Then we began to see the potential. We never imagined
we were going to have such a big response. It was a big surprise,”
relates Yanira.
Yanira works as a technical assistant for PROFRUTA, the extension
branch of the Ministry of Agriculture in Guatemala created to diversify
the country’s export crop production. Yanira was hired by PROFRUTA
in 2005 to identify and recruit famers from the large region of Petén into
the program. Yanira reached out to ranchers and to small-scale
producers and convinced 50 farmers to join the program. Once on
board, Yanira organized the farmers into associations, enabling them to
export their produce and compete in the global market, and
coordinated the establishment of the fruit plantations.