With the help of TerraLoop and the Sharjah Girl Guides, Goumbook was able to organise an event to collect seeds from trees that were planted four years ago with long term partners Accor and Chalhoub Group. As the trees are now mature and producing healthy seed pods, it was decided to harvest these seeds and produce a seed bank that can be used to establish more trees.
“This is such a huge achievement for our Give a Ghaf tree planting program, knowing the immense value of the Ghaf tree, said Tatiana Antonelli Abella, Founder and Managing Director at Goumbook. “It is fantastic that our own trees are now producing seeds. We are very grateful to TerraLoop and the Sharjah Girl Guides for making this happen.”
Over the course of the morning, 120,000 seeds were collected: 10,000 of the seeds were collected by 10 Sharjah Girl Guides who were aged 8-10. They all worked together as a team, sharing tasks and having fun. Now, Goumbook has a huge number of seeds that are ready to be planted, to further drive the ‘Give a Ghaf’ programme.
Ryan Ingram from TerraLoop was instrumental in this event for all the experience he brought and the training he gave to the young girls. He told us: “After gearing up and a short briefing, we all headed out in the late afternoon summer sun to the Ghaf forest with the mission of raking up and collecting the fallen seed pods from under the trees. The girls collected over 100,000 seeds in 4 hours! They were so surprised and happy with the success of their hard work.”
