One of Barbarah Cenard’s earliest memories is helping her parents plant a hardwood tree near their house. She didn’t know much about hardwood trees back then as a wee child. Things are different now. In January as part of our new mentoring program she beat out the others by naming more trees than anyone else.
To mark this year’s International Women’s Day, we celebrate Barbarah. She’s a special gal. She has eight siblings, loves to sew, preferred French and math in school, and is now focused on learning forestry skills.
Her dream is to plant and nurture a forest around her family home where the land is nearly vertical and largely barren. She says the most important thing about raising a forest is patience. A seamstress knows patience. A rural Haitian walking mountain paths knows patience. Barbarah is our future – a young and patient woman preparing herself to transform her environment from bleak to bountiful.