The Restoration Initiative project spoke to Brigitte Agbasso, 52, in Central African Republic. She is a widow and group leader in the community of Yobé and lives in Mona Sao. She cultivates her farm every year, working on one hectare of open forest annually. Read her story in her own words below:  

“The village was facing enormous difficulties in finding arable land within 5km of it. The land was severely degraded, and production was insufficient to feed the household members. 

 She said “The WWF experts who often passed through Mona Sao stopped off one day in the village to announce that a project led by FAO would be carried out in our village to propose alternatives to improve our agricultural activities and avoid impacting our valuable protected areas”.  

Village chiefs and prominent community leaders from the clustered villages of Pissa, Bombé, Boyama, Boyali and Bongombé in the southwest of the country had long sought to protect nearby forests and surrounding environments. It was through in-person meetings at the project sites that the TRI CAR project first learned of the coordinated efforts among three villages to establish a community forest.  

She continued, “The TRI project has trained us to establish tree nurseries and collect seeds in the forest. Each household with fallow land will repurpose it to restoration actions and be responsible for planting trees and benefiting from agricultural seeds to maintain the trees in their fields. Our nursery site has grown so well. 

Thanks to the project, we plan to pool a share of land for the cooperative’s agricultural production and set up a village savings bank to support the members” added Brigitte.  

The TRI project in the Central African Republic (CAR) is focused on the five subprefectures in the southwest of the country, which is mainly forest area, including the prefecture of Lobaye and the commune of Pissa. TRI project also supported the development of a simple forest management plan with two major sections, including capacity building and support in putting together and submitting an application for the allocation of community forests.