From charcoal-making to guarding forests is not an easy transition for sure. The irony is not lost on Letty neap, 54, who maintains seedlings of native tree species planted at the Veco Reforestation Park in barangay tabunan, Cebu.

Nepa is a member of one of the 13 people’s organization mobilized by the Philippine Business for Social Progress (PBSP) and the Visayan Electric Co. (Veco) to maintain and protect reforested areas within the Central Cebu Protected Landscape (CCPL). Nepa, who used to eke out a living by cutting trees and turning these into charcoal, is now part of a campaign to reforest Cebu.

She receives Php6,000.00 a month tending to tree seedlings, a far cry from the Php450.00 a week or Php1,800 a month from making and selling charcoal. She said the income she earned from making charcoal was not enough to feed her six children and 17 grandchildren. “Even when I’m sick, I have to continue making charcoal for my family,” she said. “I chip off from barks of trees to sell firewood when the land is wet and its difficult to burn wood for charcoal,” she added.

She became part Veco’s Php19.4million reforestation project when the Dulhogan People’s Association, a community based organization of which she is a member, was chosen by PBSP to raise native and indigenous tree species for the power distribution utility firm’s reforestation park.

CCPL covers the protected watersheds of Mananga, Kotkot-Lusaran and Buhisan, and the Central Cebu and Sudlon National Parks.

Veco adopted 540 hectares within the CCPL and undertook the responsibility of reforesting it. The firm plans to plant one million trees within the CCPL by 2015. By then, Veco also plans to have planted 100,00 magroves on 10 hectares of the foreshore off Mactan Islands.