Our charity of choice is 'Trees for the Future', who aren’t just planting trees, but improving impoverished farmers lives through regenerative agriculture, which revitalises degraded land.
They are currently working with thousands of farming families across five countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. The focus is on the implementation of Forest Garden Programs in Cameroon, Kenya, Senegal, Uganda, and Tanzania, as these are areas with the biggest impact and profound results.
We lose trees at a rate of 50 football pitches per minute as our food systems destroy our ecosystems. Most of this degradation occurs in the developing tropics of Africa, Latin America, and South and Southeast Asia where hundreds of millions of chronically-hungry, smallholder farming families use destructive and short-sighted agricultural practices that further degrade their communities trees, soil, water and biodiversity, making them even more likely to migrate and more vulnerable to the climate changes that lie ahead.
The Forest Garden Programme is a simple, replicable and scalable approach with proven success. Farmers are trained over a four year period to sustainably revitalise their land. The programme provide all of the training, seeds, tools, and materials.
The farmers come prepared with their own land and ready to change their family’s life. Through the Forest Garden Approach, farmers plant thousands of trees that protect and bring nutrients back to the soil. This helps farmers grow a variety of fruits and vegetables.
Forest Garden farmers gain increases in income and food security, even in the first year.
The latest data indicates that the Forest Garden Approach ends hunger for most families after the first year. Only 13% of our project participants were food secure when they joined the program, and after just 12 months of planting Forest Gardens, 86% of our farmers aren't worried about going to bed hungry.
Through the Forest Garden Approach, we are impacting the lives of their farmers and children, resulting in positive impacts for over 28,000 people so far. A total of 82% of our farmers have seen significant income increases and more than 92% now feeling capable to brace for any unforeseen circumstances the future may bring.
By decreasing the use of destructive farming practices such as burning, clearing and plowing, Forest Gardens reduce deforestation by eliminating farmers' dependence on forests for food, timber, and many other non-timber forest products. The positive environmental impacts of a Forest Garden are endless.
