Stories
Discover real-world stories of communities overcoming poverty and deforestation! Plant With Purpose, a Christian non-profit, shares examples of environmental sustainability and stewardship from all around the world. These stories show us how faith, resilience, and sustainable practices transform people’s lives as well as their environment. As rural families overcome poverty and heal the planet, embrace empowerment, renewal, and hope.
About Our Work
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...
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About Our Work, Burundi
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...
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About Our Work
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...
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About Our Work
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...
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Why I Support
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....
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Burundi, Living Sustainably
Keza, Burundi: "I was able to harvest twice as much."
“My name is Keza. I joined the Purpose Group very recently.” For Keza, life with five young children was full of responsibility and challenge. In her community in Burundi, farming is the foundation of survival; however, years of difficult harvests meant that food and income were often uncertain. When Plant With Purpose arrived in her […]
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About Our Work, DR Congo, Tanzania, Thailand
Local Innovations Build Resilience: How Plant With Purpose Supports Communities to Thrive
Outside aid arriving to “fix” a community’s problems can often do more harm in the long run. Lasting change doesn’t come from handouts. It comes when barriers are removed and communities are empowered to build resilience and create their own solutions. At Plant With Purpose, our model is not designed to just offer help. It […]
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About Our Work, Environmental Restoration
Change Belongs in Local Hands
At Plant With Purpose, we believe the future belongs to local communities. That’s why we don’t see people as projects, but as partners. Every Purpose Group writes its own bylaws. Every leader is elected by the members, who are also their neighbors. Every farmer is both a student and a teacher. Because when change is […]
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Thailand
Susan, Thailand: " I see creation is full of beauty and essential to our lives."
“Before joining a Purpose Group, my biggest concern was that my family depended on farming for a living. We planted maize and tended to a small fruit farm. But farming is unstable. Our income depended on the market price of crops. Some years, prices were so low that we lost money, and all the effort […]
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Mexico
Leobardo, Mexico: "Everything has a purpose"
“When I first heard about the program, it didn’t really catch my attention.” Leobardo’s honesty is disarming. As a pastor, he wasn’t looking for another commitment. “I thought the Purpose Group meetings would take too much of my time. At the beginning, everything felt complicated. Roll call, share purchases, keeping records, handling other people’s money. […]
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Burundi
Niyonkuru: "I am no longer waiting for help."
"There was a time when I was full of despair. Poverty had overwhelmed us,” Niyonkuru begins, his voice steady but heavy with memory. “We couldn’t even keep our child in school. And when he dropped out, things only got worse.” 42 year old Niyonkuru lives in Burundi with his wife and two grown children. Before […]
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Dominican Republic
José, Dominican Republic: "I know we are moving forward"
José looked around his home in the countryside, and saw something that troubled him deeply. "I had to buy all the produce for my family to eat,” he recalls. “Almost everyone else in my community was producing the food their families needed from their own plots. But I wasn’t, he said. “That’s what moved me […]
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About Our Work
Three Ways Plant With Purpose Practices Partners Not Projects
At Plant With Purpose, one of our most important commitments is to treat the communities we work alongside not as projects to be fixed, but as partners in transformation. We call this approach Partners Not Projects. This principle is not just a slogan. It is a foundational practice that shapes the way we restore watersheds, […]
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Haiti
Stanley, Haiti: "I know we are changing the future”
“My name is Stanley. I’m 75 years old. I’m a farmer, and my wife and I have raised seven children. Our youngest is 25 now, and our oldest is 42,” he begins, speaking with wisdom and experience. Though Stanley has always worked hard, the challenges of poverty and climate change loomed large in his life […]
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Tanzania
Faith, Tanzania: "It’s through this land that my life changed.”
“My name is Faith. I’m a wife, a mother of seven, and a farmer. I live in the Msuu watershed, and I belong to a Purpose Group.” Just a few years ago, Faith never imagined she would describe herself this way. She never imagined she’d be running a business, much less two. She never thought […]
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