The Sower

Fall 2025

The Partnership Edition

HOW COLLABORATION IS FUELING OUR WORK

Since Plant With Purpose was founded 40 years ago, we have been deeply committed to collaboration. In fact, we conduct our work through the Plant With Purpose Global Partnership—a network of nine legally independent organizations operating interdependently, inspired and united by our shared faith, vision, mission, and values. We accomplish our shared mission under local leadership, while working collaboratively to reverse poverty and transform watersheds. But the collaboration doesn’t stop here. We also partner with everyone from rural farmers in Burundi to major funders and U.S.-based NGOs, because we believe we can only reverse poverty, restore watersheds, and renew hope by working together.

In this issue of the Sower, we invite you to hear from the local farmers, the global partners, and everyone in between, who are making watershed transformation possible. These are the people behind the purpose. As you read these stories, you’ll see that collaboration strengthens every part of our work and spreads our collective impact further than it ever could if we worked alone. We pray that these articles give greater insight to our mission statement: Together—Reversing rural poverty. Restoring watersheds. Renewing hope. Rooted in faith.

Why I Partner with Plant With Purpose

My name is Nicole O’Brien. I am a full-time watercolor painting artist. I live in rural northeast Iowa on a farm surrounded by animals and agricultural fields. Hence, the name of my business, “Color Splash Ranch.” The subject matter of my art is usually nature and the creatures that inhabit our planet....

Collaboration Across Continents: The Global Team Behind Every Planted Tree

Collaboration is a core value of Plant With Purpose, and is deeply embedded in how we operate at every level. The deep collaboration between our local staff and partnering farmers is at the forefront of our daily impact, and is essential to our growth across 71 watersheds in nine countries. Through collaboration between Plant With Purpose staff, partnering farmers, watershed communities, like-minded NGOs, and funding foundations, lives and land are actively being restored every day...

The Purpose Plan: How Collaboration Shapes Our Strategy

At Plant With Purpose, we believe growth doesn’t happen in isolation—it’s cultivated through collaboration, vision, and shared purpose. This year, we embarked on one of our most exciting organizational journeys yet: creating a new three-year rolling strategic framework, which we call the FY 2026–2028 Purpose Plan...

In Mutsindozi, Transformed Communities are Transforming Watersheds

The Mutsindozi watershed is one of twelve watersheds where Plant With Purpose Burundi works. Mutsindozi is uniquely located at the base of two mountain ranges: the Inanzerwe on one side and the Kibimbi on the other. This steep terrain leads to serious environmental threats, including deforestation for wood and charcoal, over-grazing and wandering livestock, bush fires, erosion, depleted water sources, soil degradation, and floods which destroy the banks of the Mutsindozi River...

Loaves, Fish, and the Power of Collaboration

When I was hired nearly 33 years ago, I knew relatively little about community development, reforestation, or nonprofit management. I had little cross-cultural experience and had spent one unfortunate summer working on a farm in Oregon. However, my time as a Navy officer taught me how to work as a part of a team and how to rely on others with more detailed technical knowledge than my own. I knew that my skills alone were not enough to sustain our work—I needed to collaborate with other experts...

How Partnerships Build Community in Haiti

Since 1997, Plant With Purpose has witnessed farmers in rural Haiti changing their lives and their communities by partnering with one another. One of the goals of bringing people together is to revive a traditional Haitian practice called Konbit – a form of community cooperation where neighbors gather to help each other with agricultural tasks. […]