You may have read Tribepad’s ethical manifesto, launched last year. We thought we’d give you a bit of an update as to how it’s all going.
Becoming carbon-negative, climate positive
We’ve now purchased and planted 243,925 trees with Ecologi and will pass 250,000 trees within the next couple of weeks. This is an incredible milestone. It means we’re well on target to our ethical manifesto pledge of planting 1,000,000 trees within 3 years (incredible, we know!)
We’ve removed 1844 tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere (well not us personally, shout out to all the trees putting in the ground work for us). To put that into perspective, the carbon removed is the equivalent of 4,501,626 miles driven in an average car saved or 5,443 square metres of ice from the arctic saved.
We’ve also helped purchase fuel efficient stoves in Honduras. These aim to stop 42,000 tonnes of carbon entering the climate over the lifetime of the stoves. And 5,100,000 tonnes of wood being burnt over the next 5 years, (an absolutely insane amount of wood).
Giving back, locally and globally
We’ve also funded 572 loans in 56 countries at a total cost of $14,500 with Kiva. We’ve however, only put $11,000 into the fund. So $3,500 in value has been created and refunded from payments from people that have repaid loans we made them. This is a very powerful mechanism as it proves that our money is being used multiple times to benefit multiple people over time. Our first target is to get $100,000 working for people around the world, so we’re 14.5% of the way there right now.
Again to shed some light onto what this actually means for real people, this week we have helped 37 people. Here are the stories of just two:
“Yahaya is married and lives in a humble mud house with his wife, children, and mother in a small village in Kaduna, Nigeria. Farming is the primary occupation within his community and like many motivated smallholder farmers, he dreams of expanding his farming business. Yahaya is seeking a loan to buy high-quality seeds, fertilizer and herbicides for the planting season to enable him to double last year’s yield and consequently increase his income. He plans to use the profits from this season’s harvest to build a better house for his family. With support from lenders to grow his farming business, Yahaya looks forward to a generous harvest and feels more empowered to expand his maize farming operations thereby becoming a more successful farmer.”
And,
“Lesbia is 34 years old and makes a living selling new clothing and shoes as a street vendor, as she has for the past 7 years. She is an honest and hardworking person. She is requesting a loan with Fundenuse with Kiva to purchase clothing and shoes to increase her inventory and earn more income. Her short term goal is to establish a shop in her home. She hopes that this loan will help her to achieve her goal. She expresses her gratitude for Fundenuse and Kiva for their trust and support. Lesbia is part of the solidarity group “Hermanos Unidos” with Julia, Carlos and Ney.”
With loans paid back fortnightly, we help around 80 people a month right now, and that will grow exponentially over time as we add funds and get repaid from original loans.
We’re incredibly proud that our ethical manifesto and what we’re doing at Tribepad has a direct impact not only on our lives, but many others we never hear or see. That’s why we thought this time it would be good to highlight some of them.
