Restoring forests contributes to higher levels of biodiversity. After all, trees provide different soil nutrients, shadow for those smaller plants that need it and increase the maintenance of water in the ground, all of which contribute to medicinal plants and herbal gardens to flourish. The same herbal gardens that companies like the Himalaya Drug Company depend on.

WeForest is looking for an experienced Finance and Administration Director, who will be responsible for all financial and related administrative matters of WeForest Ethiopia and will support the Ethiopian team in facilitating the country forest and landscape restoration program. Read the job description below.

WeForest is looking for an experienced project manager to develop, implement and monitor forest restoration and livelihood projects in Desa’a.
Read the job description below.

"You can say that an activity will provide income, but it’s more meaningful to try to understand how much income will be generated in a given period for how many people or households – it involves disaggregating a single variable into its constituent parts, and the parts are usually very quantifiable" - Yvonne Tamba from the Land Health Decisions team (ICRAF).

Why is it important to plant a tree ? Amos Lucas is telling us why trees are so important for his school in Kinesi, Tanzania, and how he and his community make trees grow.

In Tanzania, trees are being planted in local nurseries and afterwards they are being distributed among families and secondary schools that take care of them.

However, it´s not just about planting trees though. As Obadiya, our local partner, explains in this video, a big part of the work related to educating the community and students at secondary schools how to take care of the trees until they are ready for harvest. This way, the trees have provided many benefits to the local families.

I once witnessed an encounter between a spiritual leader from the coast of Tanzania and a spiritual leader from an indigenous community in the Peruvian highlands. At one point the Tanzanian asked his Peruvian colleague: ´when I look around here, in the highlands, I see only rocks, no forests. How do you communicate with your forefathers?´, as in his culture, the spirits of his forefathers live in trees and forests (for those that are curious, the Peruvian answered that they find their spirits in the mountains, they call them ´apu´, but that on a different note).

In Brazil, WeForest is building forests corridors to preserve biodiversity. With camera traps, wildlife can be observed when returning to their habitats.

WeForest, in collaboration with FAO's Forest and Water Programme and GIZ delivered a forest-water capacity building workshop in Mekelle, Ethiopia during June 2018.  The workshop trained technical participants from a range of government, NGO and research organisations aiming to build the capacity and knowledge of forest-water monitoring in Ethiopia, as it relates to Forest and Landscape Restoration (FLR).

WeForest, FAO and GIZ have just delivered a forest-water capacity building workshop in Mekelle, Ethiopia.

The top soil in the Khasi Hills is very shallow and lacking in nutrients. A natural way to condition and fertilize soil is to add compost to the vital humus layer. It may be surprising but the foundation to a healthier cloud forest is laid by worms and kitchen scraps.

In Central Tigray in Ethiopia, WeForest collaborates with partners Mekelle University and Tigray Bureau of Agriculture and Rural Development to support local community in training and creating jobs.

Holding her infant child and standing between her mother and grandmother, this is Sakani Malunga. These four generations live under one roof - a close kinship we have lost in the West. Sakani and her family have a 9 hectare subsistence farm where they grow vegetables and maize - a staple across the Luanshya district in the Zambian Copperbelt. Sakani recently joined the forest restoration program and has committed to return one hectare on the farm to forest through assisted natural regeneration.

After intensive months spent planting and restoring 270 hectares of forest, our team in Brazil, IPÊ, have just been back to visit the site and see the progress. During the visit they checked on the survival of the seedlings and took aerial drone photographs so that in the future we can compare the restored forest with the original.

We are excited to announce that the first of our nurseries is in operation in Tigray. The project, launched last year, restores forests through exclosure zones. Seeds have been planted in the Mygoa nursery and we’re just waiting for them to germinate.

Over the coming months we will continue to collect seeds from nearby forests and purchase them locally. We will be setting up more nurseries as well so that we can get as many trees growing as possible.

It is our aim to plant 32,380 trees this year. 

Our project in Amhara, which focuses on restoring forests in order to create healthy and productive lands for rural families, is now well underway. We have three nurseries up and running, several restoration sites identified and 600 families signed up to plant trees on their farmland.

At the nurseries, potting and seedling production is underway where, today, an estimated 172,000 seeds and seedlings are growing. Over the coming months we will grow even more seedlings ready for the rains to arrive around June. 

Harvesting food from forests can improve food security for rural families across the globe. Food security exists when everyone has access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs for an active and healthy life.