Mission

People helping people to improve their lives by introducing environmentally sustainable land management projects saving the environment we all share.
Most communities around the world recognize that they need to plant trees on their degraded lands if there are to improve their lives. They know trees will minimize soil erosion, supply forage for animals, and provide a source of fuelwood, but planting trees is difficult when the canopy has disappeared, topsoil has been eroded, and the climate and growing conditions have changed.
Communities around the world turn to Trees for the Future for technical knowledge and planting materials so that they can bring degraded lands and struggling farmlands back to sustainable productivity. With the help of volunteers and community leaders world-wide, our program technicians reach even the most remote areas.
We are also active in the US, educating students and communities about global issues, our role in the environment, and energy efficiency.

You and the Environment:

As our technicians work in these threatened lands, we remind the people there that this project is made possible through the generosity of Americans who are concerned about them, and who wish them a better life. That is a big reason why so many people are joining this program.
But their concerns are also about happenings much closer to home. Right now, an area of the Amazon larger than New Jersey is being cleared and burned and people here wonder how many species, many not even discovered, are now extinct - and what could those species have contributed to the future of all of us had they been protected.
They see the Pacific closing over smaller islands as the polar icecaps melt, and know the same thing is happening to islands in the Chesapeake Bay and the Mississippi Delta.
They see ten times as many cars - big, fuel-gulping cars - on the roads as there were 60 years ago, and they wonder how much longer the air will be fit to breathe.
They see more violent, more frequent, typhoons and hurricanes. They see water supplies drying up all over the world. They see hotter average temperatures, the arrival of diseases such as dengue and West Nile Fever, and they realize that these are not just happening in tropical countries - it`s starting to come home as well.
And that`s why many people join our program.

What We Don`t Do:

Working with threatened peoples and communities all around the world, we follow the advice of the US Forest Service:
Take nothing but photographs. Leave nothing but footprints.
We don`t favor, or discriminate against, any persons.
We don`t go into places we`re not asked.
We don`t "target" places to start projects.
We don`t buy or invest in local endeavors.
We don`t ask local people to pay for our services.
We don`t threaten or pay people to plant trees.
We don`t keep our ideas secret from other organizations.
We don`t make recommendations without first understanding the situation.
We don`t introduce species that potentially can cause even worse problems than the community already has.
We don`t sit in fancy hotels talking about trees that have never been planted.

History

Our history is closely tied to the people of the world's developing communities. Starting in the early 1970's, serving as volunteers in the world's developing countries, we took note of the human tragedy brought on these families by illegal logging and unsustainable land management systems. As families could no longer sustain themselves on their farmlands, they turned to find work in cities where their sons became beasts of burden and their daughters did what they could to put food on the table.
Working with community leaders, we began to find ways to save these lands and offer hope to the people there. To keep them productive on their lands, with their families and cultures intact. People knew that their troubles began when the trees were cleared from their lands. They understood that things would only get better when the trees were returned.
We began providing them with seeds of beneficial trees, training in how these trees could help them, and offering on-site planning assistance. People responded enthusiastically. Entire villages soon joined in, making great sacrifices to save their homes and way of life.

Projects

To come