Let's reach into our pockets.
A new iPhone 14 Pro with some extra storage retails for $1299.
Our donors have planted 8,333 trees and paid 125 hours of work for almost the same price - $ 1,250.
Here's the story of how our first donation as a nonprofit is already changing lives at a scale you might be shocked to learn for the price.
The Reforestation Project
A few months ago, while researching initial partners for The Hedrick Project, I knew I wanted to do something about reforestation. Reforestation is replanting an area with trees - human activity, wildfires, floods, or other reasons could have deforested this area.
While researching, one organization caught my eye, Eden Reforestation Projects.
Three things made Eden Reforestation Projects special in my eyes.
1) They hire locals to plant trees, like Maman'i Kambina.
Maman'i Kambina is a single mother with six children living in a remote village, Mahabana, in Madagascar. Before joining the Eden Reforestation Projects as a planter, it was difficult to make ends meet. As Mahabana grew, trees were cut down, and the mud eroded, taking all of the coastal ecosystems with it. The economic revenue from the ocean decreased and eventually drove the village further into poverty. Eden Projects hires hundreds of local villagers in Madagascar to help plant trees, like Maman'i. Now, she is passionately working to protect her local ecosystems and can pay to send all of her children to school. The success of the community, the success of the environment, and the success of the Eden Reforestation Projects are all inextricably entwined.
2) They focus on the growth of their forests, not just planting trees.
Unfortunately, a lot of nonprofits do not spend the time following up on the plants that they do. All of the resources used, saplings planted, and hours spent, go to waste.
Eden Reforestation Projects focuses and follows up on all of the work that they are doing. Since they are hiring locals, the locals are invested in what is best for their community, and everyone works together to see forests coming to fruition.
3) Eden Reforestation Projects make extraordinary partners.
If you are easy to work with, it makes everything better. While this is the least important of the three reasons, we still have to consider it. Their partnership program is fantastic, and we are lucky to be working with them.
After choosing Eden Reforestation Projects as our implementing partner for our reforestation project, we were excited to continue forward. We started fundraising for the project and agreed to enter their partnership program and contribute quarterly to their work.
$1,250
As we mentioned earlier, for $1,250, our donors have planted 8,333 trees and paid 125 hours of work. Here is a section of the invoice:
In 2023, with our simple goal of $5,000, we will plant 33,333 trees and pay for 500 hours of work.
500 hours of work, changing the lives of those like Maman'i who might not have access to a job. Changing her children's lives as she can now feed and support her family.
33,333 trees. More importantly, trees that will be monitored have the best chance of surviving adulthood. Impacting the immediate environment and cleaning our entire world of emissions.
What amazes me is the simplicity and sheer scale we can grow to together. $1,250 is not a small amount of money. However, when you look at all it is doing and its impact, something truly extraordinary is happening.
Not all of our partners have the luxury of being able to mathematically prove what X amount in donations can do - for those that can. It tends to be a smaller amount than any of us would expect.
$24 can give one person clean drinking water is another excellent example. That is what many of us spend monthly on a few subscriptions, weekly on coffee, or on a random night when we could have cooked ourselves dinner.
If we can change the way that we look at our spending to put aside a few small expenses each month, we can make a difference in animal, human, and environmental life across the globe.
If we have ten people that donate $42 monthly, those ten people will have planted 33,333 trees and funded 500 hours of work for those that previously might not have even had a job.
Donate monthly to our reforestation project or The Collective, the pool for all of our projects. You'll be surprised at the impact you can make.