Dear Partners in Making A Difference,

Good day! It has been seven months since the start of the lock downs. During this time, your support has been invaluable in empowering our partners in Yangil, Zambales and Bataan weather the storm that is Covid 19.

We are happy to update you on the following:

1. 10,420 trees have been planted and are growing now as seedlings in Zambales. Led by Chieftain Gabriel, Here is the breakdown of seedlings. We were able to hire the entire village of Yangil to grow these. 29% are forest trees and 71% are fruit trees with food production potential such as cashew/kasuy, tamarind/sampaloc, jackfruit/langka and soursop/guyabano which we hope to maximise in the coming years. These trees will be distributed to individual farms to empower the families to build their own agri businesses. Our Make A Difference Market is already preparing for the selling and marketing of their farm produce as it connects with more stakeholders in the food industry.

Zambales is also a honey producing partner, creating a light citrus variant of honey which we process and sell on https://madmarket.co

2. Our partners in Bataan headed by Ayta elder Erlinda, have also benefitted as they also received vegetable seeds (string beans, squash and eggplant) and are now a partner farm of our Make A Difference Market, supplying us with string beans, eggplant, squash, bananas, papaya, chilli, rattan, pingol bato and 3 varieties of raw forest honey. They have more produce in the works! These items can also be found on https://madmarket.co.

We thank you from the bottom of our hearts. We will always plan for long term sustainability and continue to build circular economies based on the trust that you and our community partners have extended to us.

If you have comments, questions or suggestions please let us know as we are happy to listen to your own thoughts and would like to make our dream of healing the planet and reducing poverty move faster despite all the challenges.

Our dream of 3000 hectares of rainforest, 100 hectares of food forest and 1 hectare herbal medicine forest are closer to reality because of your support

Rain Forest - 6/3000 -> your contribution gives us the opportunity to bump this up to 9/3000
Food Forest - 1/100 -> your contribution gives us the opportunity to bump this up to 7/100
Medical Forest - 0/1 *we'll get there soon enough

If you would like to continue supporting the community and access some high quality produce please let us know! Our MAD Market team is happy to assist. Trees are still available for purchase as well.

While we cannot visit, we have created online programs for learning that continue to share the lessons and values that our partner communities have taught us. You can learn more at https://www.madcourses.net/ which offers great opportunities for schools and universities to continue learning online.

Thank you and have a safe year ahead!

- Raf Dionisio,co-founder of MAD (Make A Difference) Travel