The future of Trees for the Future?
They are called Trees for the Future.
The problem is... I don't know if they are any good or not. Are they planting trees? Are the trees still there after 20 years? I don't know.
I get promotional emails from them every once in awhile and the last one concerned me. It was all about how they sent staff to "Climate Week" in New York City where they discussed climate change and social justice.
This seems pretty far away from actually planting trees in Africa. New York is one of the most expensive cities in the world. It seems that perhaps the staff are more interested in hobnobbing with social elites than planting trees. (Which, I get it, I like socializing more than getting my hands dirty too).
But I'd rather give money to people who are directly making contributions, not working in an office in the US.
Is this even possible? Should we find another partner? Or should I just accept that this is how things are?
For the record, I think they are a legitimate charitable organization, but I do think they need to refocus on their core mission.
We'll probably continue to support them unless there is an obvious way to pivot to a more effective group.
A. you can find that they are not planting the trees, and
B. there actually does exist a better alternative
Giving a dollar to the guy with a sign at the offramp doesn't make the world a better place, it makes it worse. "Welfare supports the greedy, not the needy"
I looked into tree-planting/reforestation briefly, and wasn't optimistic about it. It seems like mostly a scam.
Stuff like that is the #1 argument for a lot of people against funding projects designed to alter climate change. Why give $5 trillon+ dollars to scam artists; we have seen in the past failure by organizations to solve even regional problems when given adequate resources. Who suspects it will be any more successful when involving multi-national groups, each with an individual self-interest, and third-world countries.
It just 1) enrichens criminals, who will go on to do more criminality. 2) redistributes wealth to corrupt groups of people.