Carbon Offsets

Community Friends has a unique carbon offset program that helps alleviate poverty while promoting sustainable land stewardship. Our program includes both carbon sequestration through reforestation and promotion of lifestyle shifts away from fossil fuels toward renewable energy sources such as eco-friendly micro-hydro power generation.

In April 2011, we developed The Carbon Game that we are now bringing to schools in the USA. The Carbon Game is a fun way to teach children about carbon dioxide concentrations in our atmosphere and ways they can help through conservation, mitigation, and education. The program teaches students about climate change and the important task of measuring carbon emissions. We believe that educating the next generation about CO2 concentrations, conservation and mitigation is one of the greatest impacts we can have in our work. The success of the program has inspired Community Friends to partner with other educators and develop a model that can be offered nationally as well as internationally. Please see our blog on The Carbon Game for the latest news.

Our pilot project in Sri Lanka’s high-elevation tea country helped install a micro-hydro power generator, which utilizes the abundant water flow in this mountainous region. As a result, the village has eliminated the use of burning kerosene electricity. This provides clean power to the village and frees workers to focus on important tasks rather than constantly struggling to obtain kerosene from far away town centers.

Another project underway in Sri Lanka is the planting of 10,000 trees on land acquired by Community Friends in tandem with our local partner. We have partnered with the local university to design a sustainable reforestation project including many varieties of trees, understory plants and ground covers, which promote soil, water, and biodiversity improvements on the land. We are applying agro-forestry principles to the selection of tree and plant species, opting for fruit bearing trees such as Jack, Mango, and Avocado, which provide for nutritional and medicinal improvements to the community as well as economic stimulation.