For the fifth of our workshop series on Learning from Nature’s Resilience, we focused on native trees.  After supertyphoon Odette claimed so many of the sacntuary’s mature trees, an assessment was made of the surviving tree species and our suspicion was proven right that those that survived were mostly native trees.  We reached out to the Visayas Native Trees (VNT) Enthusiasts group to help us with properly identifying and learning more about the propagation of these species. So we arranged a special workshop day with the group on Saturday, May 28th.

Warm up activity was laughter yoga led by Joel Lee, Permaculture and Aprotech Solutions educator. 

Then the VNT group went around the nature sanctuary to identify and tag the native trees that survived Odette. VNT members Gala, Tin-Tin, Nonoy, Tess, Sarah, Lito, Bretha and JC examined the leaves of the native trees closely then shared their knowledge of these trees. Gala was the official scribe -writing both local and scientific names of the species on the tags.

When the group had had their lunch, we proceeded with the next part of our workshop which was the expressive arts portion which was led by Paulina Constancia.
The task was: Make your native survivor self-portrait using a leaf or seed from the native tree that you best identify with.

Each of the participants went around the sanctuary again to source materials for their self-portraits.

What a wonderful day of sharing love for native trees, art and laughter! So grateful for our learning adventure together, VNT!!!