Presbyterian Tree Fund

Current Tree Grant Grantees

Learn more about the 4 grant partners supported by the Tree Fund in 2023.

Presbyterian Tree Fund passes General Assembly

The 225th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) voted to create a “Presbyterian Tree Fund.” The donations received will be used to grant tree-planting and other carbon sequestration projects. (To read more about the overture that passed, see https://www.pc-biz.org/#/search/3000854).

Presbyterians can contribute to the Presbyterian Tree Fund to counterbalance their carbon emissions

The Presbyterian Hunger Program and Presbyterians for Earth Care began in 2020 to offer the option of contributing to the Restoring Creation for Ecology and Justice fund. Many Presbyterians have already contributed! Also, the Presbyterian Hunger Program has been already granting funds for tree-planting projects. Now, this process will become more formal and intentional. Beginning in 2023, a portion of staff travel budgets in the Presbyterian Mission Agency will go to this fund as a carbon offset.

Background on the creation of the Presbyterian Tree Fund

The work of the Presbyterian Hunger Program’s partner Red Uniendo Manos Peru (Joining Hands Network),  has been greatly enhanced by 84-year-old Victoria Trujillo (Mama Toya). In the past two decades, Mama Toya has worked with the Conservation Committee of her beloved Villa El Sol community and Presbyterian Disaster Assistance to plant more than 30,000 trees on the community’s contaminated lands.

Mission Co-Worker, the Rev. Jed Koball, Joining Hands Coordinator, was inspired by the work of colleagues in Peru including the Conservation of Villa el Sol. He and others established a tree fund to receive donations from Presbyterian short-term mission trip participants. That fund supports Mama Toya’s work and offsets greenhouse gas emissions generated by short-term mission trip participants’ air travel.

The Peru Mission Network and other Presbyterians sparked the idea behind the original overture to the General Assembly.

How to Give

Give your donation to the Presbyterian Tree Fund through the “Restoring Creation for Ecology and Justice” extra commitment opportunity here. The contributions received are reserved exclusively for tree-planting and carbon sequestration projects. We know that as trees grow, they help stop climate change. They remove carbon dioxide from the air, store carbon, and release oxygen.

With your gifts, PHP will be able to allocate more funds to global and domestic partners that actively are curbing the impacts of climate change. PHP already supports this work in places like Peru, Madagascar, Ghana and Cameroon.

You are welcome to donate regularly, whenever you utilize airline travel or any other types of travel.

While the Tree fund isn’t an exact carbon offset, we encourage folks to check out a carbon calculator if they want help deciding what their donation amount could be. If you want to offset your carbon footprint in ways that include your diet, home energy use, car and air travel and more we recommend the Berkeley calculator which is very thorough. If you want to offset your air travel and have a simpler process, we highly recommend the Native-Energy individual travel calculator to estimate your donation.

 


For more information call 800-728-7228 x5832, or email php@pcusa.org.

The work of the Presbyterian Hunger Program is possible thanks to your gifts to One Great Hour of Sharing