Trees for the Future Forest Gardens

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Trees for the Future

The Change Happens Foundation has proudly partnered with Trees for the Future (TREES) since our founder, Doug Troxel, struck up a friendship with TREES’ founder, Dave Deppner over their shared conviction in planting trees to eliminate hunger and poverty, reverse deforestation, and mitigate climate change.

Since 2013, John Leary has led TREES in their highly impactful implementation of 67 Forest Garden projects across six countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. Forest Gardens in Cameroon, Kenya, Senegal, Uganda, Guinea and Tanzania consist of thousands of fast-growing trees, fruit trees, hardwoods and food crops that provide families with sustainable food sources, livestock feed, retail products, fuel wood and a 400-1,000% increase in their annual income in just four years.

So far, TREES’ 25 certified trainers have provided training and mentoring to over 4,000 families, planting over 150 million trees. The restoration of nearly 80,000 acres of land has impacted more than 26,000 lives, sequestered nearly 200,000 tons of carbon, and lifted 86% of participating families out of food insecurity after one year. Many more families will be helped with the introduction of a new Forest Garden app offering training, calendar push notifications, certification progress tracking, a global guild map, weather monitoring, GIS data collection, and a village savings and loan.