The My Trees Trust

My Trees has forged several valuable partnerships on its journey so far.

My Trees has an anchor supporter in the form of the Rift Valley Group, one of Zimbabwe’s largest agricultural conglomerates, with an established footprint in the north and east of the country. Rift Valley has provided funding for My Trees’ initial operations and continues to fund its growth. Cicada Carbon is a financing vehicle that plays a convening role, bringing technical partners, project implementers and finance together to pursue carbon projects in Zimbabwe. Cicada Carbon has financed over 130,000 fuel efficient cookstoves under a Gold Standard clean cooking project. My Trees is also supported by the Sustainable Afforestation Association.

My Trees is one of 12 winners of the Carbon Uplink Challenge, a World Economic Forum Initiative to link funding to innovative, credible projects trying to combat climate change. Via this forum we can access a wide variety of technical expertise in the carbon space. We have also partnered with the US Forestry Service, who are assisting the Trust with improving our seedling quality and production process, along with site selection and preparation. This is expected to reduce the cost per surviving seedling considerably over the next season.

In 2022 My Trees started to attract the attention of the international donor community and now has ongoing programmes with AFR100 and One Tree Planted, as well as being recognised as one of Africa’s top 100 tree planting programmes by Terra Match. In 2022 we also started a climate education project generously funded by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Zimbabwe. We have also been named as one of Coldplay’s Conservation Partners. This has brought significant exposure to the Trust. Our projects have been displayed on huge screens to millions of Coldplay fans worldwide during the build-up to each concert. This combined funding has allowed us to double our scale operations in 2023.

My Trees recognises that deforestation is a major national problem and the restoration and preservation of the natural habitat must involve national institutions with the legal mandate to act on these issues. We have partnership agreements with the Forestry Commission, National Parks and the National Herbarium to help recapacitate these important organisations and enable them to fill their mandates. Before starting a project or operation in an area, My Trees ensures that we always have the support of the local rural district council and traditional leadership and have memoranda of understanding in place with these institutions.