Prayer Trees Launch for Season of Creation 2024
EVENT DATE: September 1st, 2024
Date: Sunday, 1st September 2024
Place: St Paul’s Cathedral, 149 Cunninghame Street, Sale VIC Livestream link
Time: 3:00 - 5:00 PM
Includes: Refreshments
Cost: Free
What to expect
Join us at St Paul’s Cathedral, Sale to join in the launch of The Abbey’s Prayer Tree initiative and help grow a forest - dispersed across Gippsland - where hope, faith and love flourish. Light refreshments will be provided.
Guest speaker, Tony Rinaudo
"Rinaudo served as an agriculturalist and missionary with ‘Serving in Mission’ in Niger Republic from 1981 to 1999. There, he oversaw long-term rural development and periodic, large-scale relief programs. In this Sahel region of Niger, where tree-planting efforts were failing, he "discovered root systems remained alive underground, even in the harshest, desert-like landscapes. To encourage the ‘underground forest’ to grow into trees, he just needed to prune and manage the tree shoots. He inspired farmers to carry on this work over the years. Rinaudo’s pioneering technique is called Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration, or FMNR." The FMNR website describes the technique as a "low-cost land restoration technique used to combat poverty and hunger amongst poor subsistence farmers by increasing food and timber production and resilience to climate extremes". He consequently earned the nickname "the Forest Maker". At the UN’s global climate talks in Katowice, Poland, in 2018, it was recognised that "6M hectares of land have been regenerated under FMNR, totalling 240M trees [and that] the reforestation of the landscape can be seen on satellite images from space". (Source: Wikipedia )
Join in and view the livestream
Can’t make it to Sale? Check with your Parish if they are joining in the live stream of the event or join in from home. Parishes across the Gippsland Diocese are encouraged to become part of the Prayer Tree community by planting or dedicating a significant tree of their own. Livestream link. Download the ‘How to’ guide below for more information.
The Communion Forest is a global initiative comprising local activities of tree growing and ecosystem conservation, protection and restoration undertaken by parishes, dioceses and provinces across the Anglican Communion.