Annual Report - Fiscal Year 2010

Dear Friends,

I am pleased to share with you EcoLogic Development Fund’s 2010 annual report. Within this report we highlight some of our achievements, introduce you to a few of the extraordinary people and organizations we work with, and tell you about some of the ways we are helping rural communities restore and protect the ecosystems they rely on. 

In these pages you will hear from our Regional Program Director about her first experience visiting an EcoLogic project site where the planting of inga trees with food crops is providing a community with food to eat and sell, and a way to keep from turning more jungle into agricultural land. You can learn about our innovative local partnership model  from our long-time friend Greg Ch’oc, head of the Sarstoon-Temash Institute for Indigenous Management in Southern Belize. And you will find out how we use composting latrines, wood burning stoves and a reforestation “compass” as tools that improve people’s lives while also protecting and restoring natural habitat.

We are also introducing you to our new photo gallery with images of some of the faces and places that make up EcoLogic (photos.ecologic.org). Please visit the site where you will find out about new and ongoing projects including our Oak Foundation-supported binational effort that brings together Guatemalans and Belizeans to find ways to sustainably manage the mangroves and coastal waters they share along the Sarstoon River. You can also learn about our work establishing PIBOTEX, a biological corridor that connects three parks in northern Honduras which are home to a diversity of threatened wildlife including toucans, spider monkeys, and jaguars. This area also provides critical wintering grounds for many species of migratory songbirds. 

EcoLogic is very successful at building fuel-efficient wood stoves, training rangers to patrol the forest, and putting mangroves, woodlands, and meadows under community protection and management, to name a few examples of our activities. Yet we should not lose sight of the fact that to do all this we need financial investment not only in the direct costs of, for example, the materials to build a stove, but also in the indirect costs of the systems and people that identify the places in greatest need of stoves, consult and partner with the community, provide training and support, and then spread the word so more stoves can be built. We are a nonprofit creating positive change, and everything we do is geared towards this important work. Yet we can’t do it without basic infrastructure -- from our computers and offices to our staff that help connect you to the work we do.  And we are grateful that our friends and supporters understand this, too. 

Which brings me to the most important thing I want to tell you: Your support makes all the difference. You help us help local communities protect and restore the natural places and ecosystems of Mexico and Central America and make a difference for all living things.  

Thank you for everything you do.  

Lee Shane
Communications Officer