Abstract
After 6 years planting agroforestry sites in Guatemala, Contour Lines analyzes the data of site supervision and interiews with 11k participating families across 350 communities. Also, during these 6 years, we’ve developed our Community Engagement Model to be cost-efficient and rapidly scalable, while also achieving high success rates by treating our projects as “working grants to farmers, not charity to the poor,” (inspired by Roland Bunch’s “Two Ears of Corn”), and also by being led and implemented by our teams of empowered locals working as Contour Lines field technicians. This presentation: 1) shows the results of our work, and how it demonstrates the success (and failures!) that continue to inform and improve our model. 2) pays homage to Roland Bunch’s teachings (which sadly have been ignored by most of the nonprofit/development world, which continue to paternalize communities without lasting impacts) and show them in practice. 3) shares how our model’s structured elements can be replicated by more organizations into more countries, for scalable, lasting impacts to both ecosystems and communities.
Details
Presentation Type
Theme
2025 Special Focus—Sustainable Development for a Dynamic Planet: Lessons, Priorities, and Solutions
KEYWORDS
Sustainable development, Agroforestry, Guatemala, Community Engagement, Reforestation
