When Jenny Henman was living in Iquitos – a city in the Peruvian Amazon – almost twenty years ago, she met poverty-stricken smallholder farmers who owned deforested land, and knew then that she wanted to make a difference. She founded Plant Your Future in 2009.
What does Plant Your Future do?
Plant Your Future is a unique, pioneering charity working at the grassroots level with farmers to fight poverty, climate change and biodiversity loss in the Amazon basin.
They help farmers to plant crops and native fruit and timber tree species on deforested land, and to sell their products, including ‘carbon credits’ (see our Thought about offsetting), at local and other markets. This will ensure the land is used sustainably, provides the farmers with short-, medium- and long-term income, and encourages reforestation of the Peruvian Amazon.
Since 2009, the charity has:
- Planted a further 35,000 trees that continue to thrive
- Expanded activities to Ucayali where deforestation has been very high
- Achieved certification under the Climate, Community and Biodiversity Standard and the Verified Carbon Standard
What is sustainable agroforestry?
Plant Your Future’s work helps farmers transform deforested and degraded land into productive agroforestry systems. Put simply, agroforestry combines agriculture with forestry. Native fruit and timber trees are planted alongside short-term crops.
How did Plant Your Future become involved with 1% for the Planet?
Grain, a member of 1% for the Planet since 2008, recognised Plant Your Future as a worthy charity making a substantial contribution to urgent environmental issues, so we nominated them to become a 1% for the Planet nonprofit partner. That means that we could support the nonprofit’s work as part of the 1% of our revenue that we donate to environmental nonprofits.
Furthermore, now that Plant Your Future is an approved partner, any of the more than 4,000 business and individual members of 1% for the Planet worldwide can provide the financial support needed to help Plant Your Future achieve its goal of planting one million trees over the next few years – restoring 1,000 hectares of degraded and abandoned land across the Peruvian Amazon.
Jenny Henman, chairman and founder of Plant Your Future said of the nomination, “We are extremely grateful to have been selected to join 1% for the Planet and to become part of this global movement of corporates and individual givers to channel much needed donations to scale up action to heal the planet. With the seriousness of the climate crisis and biodiversity loss there is an urgent need to drive restoration of the Amazon Rainforest. Funds donated to Plant Your Future works are critical for enabling us to continue and expand our work at the grassroots with rainforest communities to restore deforested areas and adopt sustainable agroforestry and regenerative agriculture.”
The Amazon is a key contributor to our planet’s health and we are delighted to support Plant Your Future. In our work helping make businesses more sustainable, we appreciate the role of global as well as local action.
Get in contact if you’d like to find out more about Plant Your Future, 1% for the Planet, and other ways to help our planet thrive.
