Partnerships for fighting Global Climate Change

Organic Perspectives has proposed an Afforestation/Reforestation (AR) carbon emissions reductions project in the remotest County of Kamuli district, called Budiope. The project is aimed at creating an income source for local people through carbon finance, and protection of the environment through abatement of GHG Emissions. Project information is on: http://www.gaianlife.co.uk/organicperspectives/Carbon%20Project%20Fundraising%20Proposal2.pdf
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Dear friends,

We are delighted to let you know that any person can now help our nonprofit “Organic Perspectives” to plant millions of trees at absolutely no cost by simply using our search engine http://organicperspectives.easysearch.org.uk/ whenever you make Internet searches (powered by Yahoo!, MSN Windows Live Search, Ask.com, MIVA and many more). Every 1,000 searches made on this site helps to raise $7 and this plants 112 trees (including costs for Emissions Reductions certification by the VCS) in our GHG Emissions Reductions Tree Project in Uganda.

In addition, if you too have got a project idea for which you seek support, I would recommend a useful site. You can register now at no charge to fundraise for your cause (UK-based groups/individuals only) at: http://www.easyfundraising.org.uk/referral/17448
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You could be interested to hear of an exciting way you can support our tree project at absolutely no cost whenever you make your search for information on the Internet or shop online with several retailers as explained here below; we would like to request you to help forward the link to this page to all those people you can get in touch with—and for third party recipients to do the same.

In an effort to raise funds for our A/R project, we have registered Organic Perspectives on the “Easyfundraising UK” website, a site where anybody can support our tree project at absolutely no cost whenever they shop online with any of the UK or international retail companies listed on the “Easyfundraising” website. Over 600 well known retailers including Amazon, DELL, eBay, Tesco, Next, John Lewis, Boots, Vodafone, M&S, Play.com, Debenhams, Travelodge etc are at the site.

To support us in this way, you only need to select our nonprofit as the cause you support and then the retailers will make a donation to our project—at no additional cost on the products you buy.. All listed retailers will ask for this before you link to their actual sites to shop online. The A – Z list of retailers is accessible on: http://www.easyfundraising.org.uk/organicperspectives

Our personalized search engine above is an even great way for you to support our work at totally no cost. It works in the same way as Google or Yahoo! Whenever one uses this search engine to look for information on the Internet, Easyfundraising donates a certain amount of money to our project!. The search engine, again, is: http://organicperspectives.easysearch.org.uk/

In case our work interests you further and would like to consider offering a donation (of any size) directly to our project, you can do so online at: http://organic.givemeaning.com/. Each $5 enables us to plant 80 trees (including VCS Emissions Reductions certification) and these could have the capacity to sequester about 2 tonnes of CO2 (equivalent) per year from a maturity stage of two years onwards.

We greatly appreciate your assistance in helping us build a global network of supporters for our project by forwarding the link to this page to as many people as you can. The link is: http://www.organicperspectives.blogspot.com/

Detailed information ABOUT US is here at the bottom.

Yours,

Kalulu Anthony
Organic Perspectives
P.O Box 16
Kamuli
Uganda
Tel: +256-782-601073
Web: http://www.gaianlife.co.uk/organicperspectives
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ABOUT US:

Organic Perspectives was formed in June 2007 with the main aim of using agroforestry and organic gardening projects to enable local small-scale farmers protect the environment, promote food security and adopt sustainable and economically viable agriculture. At this moment (2008), we are implementing a tree project in Buwanume Parish, Kamuli district - Uganda. This project is supported by Trees for the Future (USA) (http://www.plant-trees.org/) and the NFP - USA (http://www.newforestsproject.org/). Details can be got from David Tye, the East African coordinator Trees for the Future, on david_tye@treesftf.org . The NFP has also made us the distributor of their free tree seeds to interested groups in Uganda. Details can be got from the NFP’s World Seed Program Coordinator, Pia Iolster on piolster@newforests.org

As our current program area (Buwanume parish) is a suburban community, farmers participating in the ongoing tree project here have small, fragmented plots of land—hence limited space for large scale forestry activities. This creates little community impact from our work, more so added to the fact that Organic Perspectives already has very meager resources even for supporting the existing little work or extending to new locations.

For this reason, we have proposed a large-scale AR carbon emissions reduction project in Budiope County, and, this is the project we are fundraising for. As the remotest part of Kamuli district, Budiope has vast pieces of bare land; has for long been severely deforested for charcoal burning often as sole income source etc. The more trees have been cut here, the more people’s life has become harder—as they have no more trees for charcoal burning, droughts are more prevalent, food prices hiked, fuelwood has become locally expensive etc.

We think an AR carbon project would be a more sustainable environmental and economic alternative in Budiope as it will not only help sequester the Greenhouse Gas ‘CO2’ but will also create an incentive for local farmers to plant more trees and save them—since they will be entitled to a percentage of carbon revenue in turn for their involvement and offer of land for forestry purposes. Our own project will also later be able to rely on carbon financing from this work itself—and hence become financially self-sustaining in a very near future.

But, like in our ongoing Buwanume tree project, the main constraint in starting off the planned work in Budiope is limited resources, especially project financing. Donor funding is even more inaccessible. So, while Organic Perspectives is a not-for-profit organisation (and is thus involved in forestry projects on this basis), we are designating our tree planting work as a formal offset project for the provision of GHG Emissions Reductions. This will not only ensure that our work is supported by carbon revenue from the project itself, it will also be an incentive for local farmers to care for the trees they have planted—as they will be entitled to a percentage of carbon revenue in turn for their involvement and offer of land for forestry.

Much as the project is being developed as a carbon emissions reductions project, carbon finance has as well proved to be very inaccessible since almost all potential buyers of Emissions Reductions are interested in carbon credits that are ready on the market. In any case, we are only looking up to carbon finance for one sole reason of making our work symbiotically dependent—generating the required project finances from the project itself, while helping the environment. Carbon finance would therefore only be an optional, by-component of our positive environmental work, but, the inability to access it has meant that we cannot do any work in Budiope either.

We therefore ask for your support to enable this project get off the ground by just using our personalized search engine above, and choosing our Organic Perspectives as the charity you support whenever you shop online with the retailers at Easyfundraising.org.uk Our fundraising goal is $250,000 and this will plant 4,000,000 trees, including emissions certification, in the first two years. Every $50 raised will enable the project to plant 800 trees—at a cost of $0.0625 a tree.

Our target of planting 2,000,000 trees per year will be ongoing for a period of 20 years, as this is the length of time we have chosen as the emissions crediting period for our voluntary carbon project. So, while the $250,000 we are seeking for to kick-start the project is a budget for the first two years only, we are sure that, at the end of the first two years, the project itself will be able to attract conventional carbon finance (from upfront emissions buyers) to enable us sustain the same activities that your support will have enabled us to start off.

A detailed description of the planned AR carbon project in Budiope (including a budget showing how the sought amount of money will be used) is in our Project Idea Note on:
http://www.gaianlife.co.uk/organicperspectives/Carbon%20Project%20Fundraising%20Proposal2.pdf

During the implementation of this AR carbon project in Budiope, technical assistance will be provided by Winrock International (USA) on a paid contract. Winrock has prepared for us a document describing their work experience and what their level of assistance to this project will be. This document is available on:
http://gaianlife.co.uk/organicperspectives/Winrock%20Carbon%20Project%20Assistance%204%20OP.pdf

Prospective supporters of our tree project have four (4) alternative ways to help us:

1. Simply using our search engine which is free: http://organicperspectives.easysearch.org.uk/
2. Visiting http://www.easyfundraising.org.uk/organicperspectives and shopping online with any of the retailers listed in the A – Z of retailers on the site”. Each retailer’s webpage asks you to name the charity you support—select Organic Perspectives.
3. Forwarding this message to as many people as possible, who might be happy to hear of these exciting ways of supporting our tree project at absolutely no cost.
4. In case of online donations directly to our project, log on to: http://organic.givemeaning.com/

We greatly appreciate the little you can do to help make poor people’s lives and the environment better, at this difficult moment of both a dire global economy and the escalating global climate change. ________________________________________________________________