 Hello everyone. This is the Foundation Update video for July 2020. I'm Ashley and I'm the camp coordinator at Ecosystem Restoration Camps. So this is a little video to tell you about what we've been up to as a movement over the course of the month. And one of the major things we've been doing is raising funds for camp contour lines in Guatemala. They are a camp that supports local people to transition from slash and burn farming where they chop down rain forests to grow monocultures of corn, lots of chemicals. This causes biodiversity decreases. This causes carbon emissions going into the atmosphere. This causes erosion and doesn't make much money for the people who are selling this corn. It also is not good for their health because there's not a lot of nutrition in corn on its own. And the good news is that people are realizing that this is a real problem and they want to transition to reforestation with native and food-growing plants mixed together to resemble ancient food forests that would appear in the regions of Central and South America in the past. So this is all really exciting and we wanted to support this camp with the latest iteration of projects that they're working with. I've got some statistics here in my book. So they managed to raise 10,086 euros, the goal of 10,000 euros. And this was to plant 27,000 trees and that's a mixture of fruit trees and native leguminous species as well as a lot of annual plants as well for other food crops. This is money that they will use to plant up 36 new sites and train 82 people on how to create agroforests on contour. 2,500 people will ultimately benefit and 25 acres will be rehabilitative. So well done camp contour lines and if you donated thank you so much for being part of such an amazing transition towards regenerative way of living for these people. This is the way that all food, not all food, this is the way that a lot of food can be grown. It sequesters carbon, increases biodiversity, it reduces erosion, it reduces flooding and increases food security and the health of the people who are growing this food. The other crowdfunding that we were doing was with the camps in California. They have been fundraising to create a mobile kitchen that will rave between the different camps that they have in California for camp events so people will come and they will camp there and take part in the restoration and rehabilitation of those sites and the camp kitchen is a mobile kitchen so it all folds up into a truck so it can be folded out, folded back in again and used whenever there are camp events happening across California and their crowdfunding was also successful. They wanted to raise $12,000 and they have currently raised $12,926 so they've stretched their goal to 15,000 and yeah this is something that was made possible by various people but specifically a company called County Archer Provisions so thank you County Archer Provisions for helping this crowdfunding succeed and for everyone else who has donated to this course. We received 35 new camp applications which we're going through at the moment and they are very varied from all over the world from sites as small as 1.5 acres to 5,000 hectares and we're excited that so many of these partners seem to be fantastic places for ecosystem restoration camps to happen so watch this space and you'll soon see lots of new camps appearing on our website we're excited to tell you more about them. We have also been running our online course and right now the students are in module 3 they're just about to finish module 3 which is all about urban land restoring ecosystems in urban places and the course has been very well received it's been really enjoyed by 145 people who have signed up and we are now excited about launching the next iteration which will take place in January so if you're interested in taking the course head over to the gyro education website there's also a page on our website you can find out more about the course and sign up there's only 200 places and 160 people have said that they're interested so don't delay if you want to take the course then sign up as soon as you can. We're looking for a graphic designer or someone that can help us with formatting our reports schedules handbooks official documents using our house style so if you're interested if you're a graphic designer and you're interested in contributing towards the restoration of the earth then check out the vacancy on our website. So the camps haven't been able to open to international students or visitors over the last few months because of the coronavirus but they have been open to local people and Camp Alta Plano in Spain has been doing various initiatives in the community one of which being a kids camp and 20 people 20 children from the ages of 9 to 14 spent 10 days immersed in nature learning about habitats learning about erosion control rainwater harvesting they were spotting all the different species that exist at the camp now that it's coming back to life they slept in tents they wild swam and they yeah they had a truly immersed in nature experience which is really important for young people to make sure that they want to fight for it in the future. There is an experience coming up at Camp Alta Plano which is about regenerative culture so how can we not only regenerate the ecosystems and the landscapes but how can we regenerate ourselves and our societies and our economies so it's very holistic program that looks at the regeneration of soils of landscapes of the self and of culture and that's taking part taking place on the 15th of October to the 22nd of October so if you're interested go to the Camp Alta Plano page on our website check it out and I will close this broadcast with some wonderful news I added up all of the numbers of all of the trees and plants that have been planted across all of the camps since we began in 2017 and the total figure and it keeps changing all the time but for now it's 185,518 which is amazing and massive congratulations to all of our camp partners within this movement who have done so well in re-greening their sites we are very proud of you and we're very pleased and grateful that you want to call yourself an ecosystem restoration camp so that's all for now and I hope that you all have wonderful days wherever you are and I will see you next time