Sustainable Harvest International
Sustainable Harvest International – Replanting rainforests and supporting families with the tools and materials they need to improve their standard of living while protecting the environment.
The outstanding features that make SHI different to most charities is their commitment to environmental, economic and social sustainability. Every project that’s co-ordinated addresses all three, with a huge focus on implementing sustainable land-use practices that alleviate poverty while restoring ecological stability to areas of land that have been plundered or deforested.
SHI is one of the most efficiently run charities I’ve seen in a long time. A quick checkup on the Charity Navigator shows how the vast majority of donations is spent on the programs, and the founder earns one of the most moderate salaries I’ve seen in the charity sector. Its impressive to see how much they have achieved with a very modest yearly revenue.
Reforest Two Acres – $30
Provide families with the training and tools they need to reforest two acres of tropical forest in Central America.
Plant a Whole Acre of Chocolate – $40
Give a family seeds, nursery materials and training to plant an acre of organic multi-story cacao in their community. Cacao (what is used to make chocolate) is a valuable cash-crop that can be grown in plots that mimic the natural forest. These multi-story crops provide families with a diversity of produce, mitigate global warming and create wildlife habitat.
Plant Three Family Gardens – $45
Malnutrition is a very real threat for countless families living in Central America. This Gift of Hope provides three families with training and seeds to grow organic vegetable gardens that will give children nutritious food to eat and families can boost income by selling excess produce at the local market.
Donating is only one of the ways you can help. You can also volunteer in Central America with Sustainable Harvest International where you get to travel, experience different cultures and fight poverty and deforestation in Central America. Upcoming trips go to Belize, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama!
Ms. Wakame
hahaha! thats so cute.
Julie
This seems really awesome, and I’m sad I haven’t been keeping up with my RSS feeds, because I like giving donations in honor of those people who are impossible to buy gifts for because they have everything. Instead, this year they got toothbrushes.
I do have to say, I once got the best address labels ever; they said “The Julie Family”. I think Shawn threw them out.
Ms. Wakame
Thanks for stopping by my little site Florence. I completely agree. Im so glad your comment is saved here should anyone be researching SHI and find this post. I am so happy to be a supporter of your charity and even more grateful to you guys for actually doing the hard work. I hope to one day be involved in some field work or help in some way.
Florence Reed
As the President of Sustainable Harvest International, I can tell you that we send our supporters two newsletters per year and two funding requests per year in the mail. These do not include stickers, calendars, teddy beard or anything other than a sheet or two of recycled paper. We also try to send our supports one email update per month (though it is always less) to update them on our progress. We always honor requests to not receive any or all of these mailings. We have never sold anyone’s contact info. I know some organizations do these things, but please don’t accuse us if you don’t know about our practices. While it is best to be well informed and support charities carefully, it is better to err on the side of being positive rather than negative. That way charities such as ours will not unfairly be judged and prevented from helping more families feed themselves and protect the world’s forests.
Ms. Wakame
Me too. It gives the whole industry such a bad rep, and for the few good guys out there, they lose out on crucial funding that they planned to spend wisely :@(
nathan
Yeah, that happened to me. I sent $11.50 to feed some homeless folk in Pittsburgh and I received mail for the next 6 months, relentlessly, from everyone from St. Jude’s Hospital to the Cystic Fibrosis people.
They’d always send me that crap: calendars, endless stamps, and the mailers were so lavishly packaged with full color prints and shit. It disgusted me. They surely spent more than my initial $11.50 just mailing stuff back to me, it makes me so angry.
Ms. Wakame
I’ve donated to carefully selected charities for years and so far I havent had my info sold onto other charities. I know many do, and thats one of the reasons its so important to thoroughly research a charity before donating. Usually if a charity has high fundraising expenses its an indicator you’ll get a lot of spam from them and they will waste most of your donations on stupid calendars and thank you teddy bears. I prefer to donate to programs where almost all goes directly to the people who need it.
I’ve known a few people who get spammed and sold on from simply donating to the childrens hospital type charities, which is a shame… it can be relentless and its so wasteful.
nykki
i’m giving your contact details so that they spam you with emails, mail, and phone calls.