The International Small Group and Tree Planting Program (TIST)
When we talk about climate change, the scale and metrics are often too vast or abstract for the average person to take stock: 1.5 degrees Celsius of global warming, 25 centimeters of sea level rise over the last century, hundreds of thousands of acres of forests lost to deforestation, billions of dollars invested in clear-cutting or saving forests.
All too often, we view climate change through this lens of numbers, science, and finance. This overlooks the true heart of the issue: the people and communities. And with many climate narratives centering the Global North, it gives short shrift to the people most at risk—and to their efforts to change the world.
The International Small Group and Tree Planting Program, known as TIST, is helping reframe these narratives by empowering the heroes of the climate change story.
An innovative small-scale growing community of smallholder farmers who have joined together, TIST helps African farmers build climate resilient communities and improve the lives of their families, local areas, countries, and the world.
Established in 1999 out of a desire to mitigate climate change while simultaneously improving the lives of the poorest people in the world, TIST is active in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, and India. TIST encourages small groups of subsistence farmers to improve their local environment and farms by planting and maintaining trees on degraded and/or unused land. These farmers work together in small groups (or “clusters”) that support each other by sharing best practices for sustainable conservation farming.
