Join us to celebrate the centenary of International Tree Foundation, by supporting our most ambitious campaign to date, as we aim to plant 20 million trees around Kenya’s highland forests by 2024.

Kenya is one of Africa’s least forested countries, with just 7% tree cover. Many factors have led to severe deforestation in the country in the 20th century, such as timber harvesting, charcoal burning and agricultural expansion. The remaining forest is a vital natural resource both locally and globally. The forests are known as ‘water towers’ due to their important role in conserving water systems and drinking water, however, the five remaining highland forests are in need of restoration.

As ITF nears its 100th year it seems fitting that we celebrate with an extremely worthwhile project based in the country where our story began in 1922 – Kenya. This campaign consists of 3 main pillars of work, the first of which being forest restoration. We are working with local community groups to restore 20,000 hectares of land to forest.

The second pillar of work is agroforestry, we aim to improve the livelihoods of 50,000 households situated close to the forests, by planting beneficial trees on their farms. Agroforestry leads to an improvement in soil structure and fertility, which in turn increases crop yield.

The third and final pillar that makes up our centenary campaign aims to engage the next generation in environmental stewardship through our tree planting programme with primary school children ‘My 20 Trees and Me – Growing Up Together’. As part of this initiative the participating children are able to plant 20 trees each within their school grounds and care for them as they grow. So far over 3,000 trees have been planted by Kenyan school children as part of this educational programme.

Last year we planted a total of 270,790 trees and improved the livelihoods of over 5000 farmers as part of this campaign. Are you able to help us with a donation towards our centenary campaign? Your support will help us reforest Kenya’s ‘water towers’ and improve the income of thousands of small-scale farmers. Thank you!