2022 was a wild year. After we all thought there would finally be some peace and quiet after 2020 and 2021, the exact opposite happened. War, inflation, staff shortages, Omicron… who has time to think about anything other than themselves?

Quite a lot of people, it turns out. In fact, the number of companies and private individuals who regularly provide us with active support is increasing. Of course, this also means that a lot has happened in our reforestation projects.

Find out here what we have achieved together with our business partners, what new updates there are from Ghana and what our goals are for 2023.

Project presentation: Ghana

The country

Ghana, country in western Africa on the Atlantic coast. Approx. 31.73 million inhabitants (136.6 inhabitants per ^km2), UN Human Development Index rank 133 (Germany: rank 9; UN Report 2020)

The place

Eastern Ghana, Oti Region, near Kyinderi; 8°12’11.2 “N, 0°07’14.9 “W

The mission

Our mission is to create long-term full-time jobs and sustainable food security for local farmers, while training young people at the local entrepreneurship school.

Procedure

Syntropic reforestation (reforestation in the spirit of nature, combined with sustainable, organic agriculture).

Labor force

Full-time workers for planting, tending and harvesting the trees. Use and sale of the harvests by the local population.

Planting time

April to September; new trees are grown in local nurseries from October to March.

Plant species

e.g. moringa, baobab (Adansonia digitate), teak (Tectona grandis), acacia (Acacia pycnantha), shea nut tree (Vitellaria paradoxa), rivet tree (Azadirachta indica), mahogany (Meliaceae).

Special feature of the project / The superpower

In addition to the sustainable creation of full-time jobs, an entrepreneurial school is being promoted in Ghana. Here, unemployed young people learn how to create a better future for themselves. You can read about what we achieve in the Success Stories.

We have compiled more in-depth details about Ghana, the entrepreneurship school, the reforestation project and the special reforestation method on Click A Tree – Planting trees in Ghana.

Previous project successes of Click A Tree

Click A Tree has been planting trees in Ghana since 2019. Thanks to the great support of numerous partners, the following has already been achieved:

Important: “Newly created working hours” only takes into account all additional working hours created in this month. Even with small numbers (e.g. 0 in Q4 2020), all existing jobs will be retained. At such times, for example, the nursery is expanded, the field prepared, planned, etc.

A video update from Clement

If you want to see what all these numbers mean in reality: Take 4 minutes of your time and let our project manager Clement take you to Ghana.

https://youtu.be/t_JBZS23WH8

In a truly meaningful reforestation project, it is not only the number of trees planted but also the diversity of the different tree species that is extremely important.

This is why we continued to diversify in 2022, planting a total of 64 different tree species to date.

You might also be interested in: How everyone benefits from a partnership with Click A Tree

The Big News: The expansion of the entrepreneurial school

Thanks to the steady growth of our partners, not only are there significantly more trees growing than before, but the “superpower projects” are also flourishing.

The superpower in Ghana is the entrepreneurial school. So far, up to 20 young people a year have been trained in the basics of entrepreneurship in a building near the reforestation project in Zongo Macheri: They learned how to write a business plan, why accounting is important (and how it works) and why a solid marketing strategy is essential.

Thanks to the strong support of all our existing and many new partners, we have now been able to expand the Entrepreneurial School. It is probably euphemistic to speak of a new “campus” – but at least there is now a second entrepreneurial school in Tamale, the regional capital of the Northern Region!

The proud community at the inauguration of the new entrepreneurial school.

Why Tamale?

Establishing an entrepreneurial school in a big city instead of a rural area offers a lot of advantages. Here are the most important ones:

1. Attractiveness for students
   Young people, i.e. potential entrepreneurial students, would like to live in a city where they can go out, shop and meet lots of other young people. All this is much easier in Tamale than in Zongo Macheri.
2. Attractiveness for teachers
   Motivating good teachers to teach in a remote rural area is also much more difficult than getting them interested in a job in Tamale.
3. Infrastructure
   As the regional capital and third largest city in Ghana, Tamale offers a much better infrastructure than Zongo Macheri. With a population of around 370,000, there is not only more going on here, but it is also much easier to obtain the working materials that students need for the practical part of their training.
4. Direct access to one of the largest markets in Ghana
   Tamale has one of the largest markets in Ghana. This allows students to test their business idea directly in reality during their studies and find paying customers – and improve the business model if necessary.

The final work is still being carried out here:

Almost finished…

And that’s it:

Would you like to make a big impact with your company in a very uncomplicated way? Then click on the button:

Success Stories: Success stories from Ghana

“Watching a tree grow is enormously exciting.”

We have never actually heard this sentence before.

And that’s right: The trees we plant need time to develop. But what’s great is that thanks to the Entrepreneurial School, we can already see anew every year what great things we can achieve together.

We would like to share three of the success stories from the entrepreneurship school in Ghana with you below.

Collins, the pearl whisperer

Collins was one of the first students in the entrepreneurship school. He successfully completed his training in November 2019.

The young man on the left, standing, the one with his arm raised – that’s Collins, at his 2019 graduation ceremony.

Then came corona, the crisis and inflation.

And yet Collins has made his dream come true: this year he opened the Ndenwure Beading Training Center. A school where he teaches other young people the art of bead embroidery.

Key ring, necklace, flip flops, handbag or even a rucksack?
No problem. Can Collins create anything?

Not only does Collins now have a job that really fulfills him thanks to his training – but he is also helping other young people to further their education and later open their own businesses!

At least as important: they also have fun doing it!

If you would like to support Collins: Like his Facebook page. And maybe leave a short, motivating comment right away.

It is these small gestures that ensure that Collins will not give up.

Baby John, the photographer

John – who they all just call “Baby John” – wanted to become a photographer. His dream: to travel the whole world and take photos of the most amazing places and the most famous people.

Part 1 of the dream has already come true. After graduating from the Entrepreneur School at the end of 2019, we were able to provide him with his own professional photography equipment thanks to the generous support of Stephanie Kubik from SK Hotels & Venues.

Since then, John has been earning his own money as a photographer, which he is currently using to finance further training.

We are sure that with the stamina John has shown so far, one day he really will travel the world and be booked by the most famous celebrities.

You go, John!

Would you like to be part of these success stories with your company? Then become a Click A Tree partner!

Mary, the tractor healer

When Chris, founder of Click A Tree, met Mary, she was still earning her living from arts and crafts. And she was really good at it – he spontaneously bought her a chic necklace.

But Mary actually wanted to repair tractors. A rather unusual wish from a young person in the heart of Ghana. But not impossible, of course.

Mary also went through the entrepreneur training – and completed it with flying colors. Thanks to the agricultural equipment in our syntropic reforestation project, she was also able to gain her first practical experience in repairing tractors.

One day she would like to start her own company. But for now, she is gaining more practical experience as an employee – and living her dream.

Helping people to help themselves with reforestation and entrepreneurial training

The idea behind Click A Tree is not only to offer people new job opportunities, but also to empower them to make their dreams come true. And it is precisely this value that the graduates of our Entrepreneurial School also share: helping people to help themselves .

We want to help them to go their own way – and we are beside ourselves with joy when we see that it works.

We take exactly the same approach with our reforestation projects. We do not plant trees that are forever dependent on our support. We are creating diversified, self-sufficient ecosystems that will be able to function completely without us in the future.

Just as nature would do.

You could say: helping nature to help itself. However, that would be wrong, as nature doesn’t need us, we need it.

Nature has enough time. Only we humans are running out of time. In other words, helping people to help themselves is purely selfish.

And we would all do well to think selfishly here and create even more forests together.

The mission for 2023

Our mission for the coming year is ambitious. But only those who think big can achieve big things. We are therefore aiming for the following in 2023:

Do you want to support us as a company in this mission?

Then write us an e-mail today with a short sentence stating that you are interested in a business partnership. We would be happy to arrange an appointment for a non-binding telephone call.

If you want to go faster, you can also start planting trees directly by creating an account on our Universal Impact Platform. The platform allows you to track your engagement and share it with your stakeholders. Your account could look like this: