Letter to Philippine Press
This letter is from the Catholic Parish of Worthing and Lancing in the United Kingdom. Each year we allocate money to help with projects across the world. Our parish is supporting a joint project between the Higaonon indigenous people on the island of Mindanao, Southern Philippines and the Missionary Society of St. Columban this year.
In recent years Mindanao has frequently suffered increasingly violent Typhoons which due to logging of trees in the mountains have caused devastating floods. Members of the Higaonon Indigenous Community in Dansolihon, Cagayan de Oro City, Mindanao collect the seeds of indigenous rainforest tree species that still survive in the upper mountain slopes and nurture them into young trees that they plant in their tribal ancestral lands. Then they care for them for five years until they are able to start developing into a generation of rainforest trees which will help prevent flooding; these young men are putting the indigenous ecological wisdom they have inherited from their forebears into helping to save our Planet.
The trees are properly cared for by the Higaonon Community and form part of the 84.5 hectares of rainforest land that is cherished by the Higaonon as their last remaining ancestral home.
Through this project, a whole rainforest is being reborn. As the rainforest recovers, the quality of the soil is being rejuvenated and the millennia-old ecosystem is being restored whereby the rainforest trees actually produce rainclouds that irrigate the Higaonon ancestral farmlands.
The Catholic Parish of Worthing and Lancing are pleased to be supporting this project. We are full of admiration with all the challenges that they must face and are encouraged by what they are doing for future generations in the protection of our planet. May the way of life of the Higaonon community in Dansolihon remains vibrant.
Our Parish Priest Fr Terry Martin comments “I am delighted that our parish is associated so closely with this project. The urgent need to heal and to restore our planet cannot be overstated and it is small, important gestures like these that remind each of us that, both as individuals and as communities, we really can make a difference. We have a mandate from God himself to care for and to till the earth. I praise the initiative of this project and promise to support it with my prayers and the prayers of our parish. The time is now! This is the acceptable day! We cannot wait”!
