In 2018, for the first time ever, the S4 Leaders Training Trip took place in Cusco. We had the chance to collaborate in the Queña Raymi Project by planting trees for the community alongside 100 Cusco COAR students, 250 locals and 170 people from the Markham community who fundraised enough money to plant 10,000 trees.

The Queñua Raymi festivals occur annually during the month of December. The local community reach out to people from different Andean communities to help with their reforestation initiative, and last year we joined the project alongside COAR Cusco students in order to provide extra helping hands. During one single day, students’ were able to plant 13,000 trees for the community as part of the kick-off of the reforestation festival.

We would like to thank everyone involved in supporting this incredible initiative as well as share that the community has gone on to plant 450,000 trees in that area! We are very grateful to have been given the opportunity to participate in this project and hope to continue to do so with our new S4 Leaders.