Olympic Spirit in Yucatán – Plant-for-the-Planet celebrates end of planting season.

In one week, the planting season in Yucatán officially ends. Before everyone leaves for a well-deserved family vacation, the team has once again shown remarkable efforts!

They are as good at soccer, volleyball and basketball as they are at planting trees. In Constitución, where power fluctuations are quite common and the internet is offline from time to time, sports are a welcome break for those who spend a lot of time at camp during the planting season. So what could be more suitable at the end of the season than to also show off athletically and then celebrate the winners?

To kick things off, Raúl Negrete, president of Plant-for-the-Planet Mexico, and Frithjof Finkbeiner, who as a donor helped make the purchase of the first area possible in 2013, first welcomed the entire team with a speech in which they thanked everyone involved for their commitment during the planting season, which is now coming to an end. There were plenty of challenges: periods of drought in the middle of the rainy season repeatedly challenged the patience of the planting team. Against this background, the fact that they have now been able to plant more than 1.6 million trees in Constitucion and Bacalar since July is more than admirable. On good days, they put more than 30,000 young trees in the ground. The still-present Corona pandemic also demanded moderation and even resulted in a temporary planting break after team members tested positive. Now, however, everyone is all the more pleased with what has been achieved. On this point, there were only winners.

After the speech, the participants went from the Plant-for-the-Planet office to the sports field in the village, where the prepared trophies triggered athletic ambitions. And unlike usual, there were also many teams, because the teams from the new planting project in Bacalar and the tree nursery had also arrived to compete with the team in Costitución. After the award ceremony, the evening ended with a traditional Posada, a typical pre-Christmas ritual in Central and Latin America, where people eat together and enjoy each other’ s company.