The TIST Model: Planting Trees, Empowering Communities 

“The climate here has changed. I wish you were here four years ago. It was extremely hot. Now because of the trees we have planted here, we can see it is a bit cooler. Like now, I am under the shade of a tree, but four years ago this tree was not here. That is the work of TIST.” 

Anthony Kiruja is one of thousands of TIST success stories across the globe. A farmer and TIST leader in Tharaka Nithi County, Kenya, Anthony works to improve the lives of his family and his community through small, replicable actions.

These men and women are combating climate change—and building stronger, more sustainable communities, one tree, one seed at a time. 

The TIST Model: Planting Trees, Empowering Communities 

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.  

The TIST program is a tried and tested low-cost model—farmer to farmer, and community to community.

TIST farmers share their knowledge with other farmers in their communities, enabling them to plant trees, take care of their farms, and support themselves through improved agriculture, forestry, and sustainable development activities.  

On hundreds of thousands of plots, often no larger than an acre, TIST participants learn better soil and organic farming methods, how to increase yields from planted crops and trees, successful seed collection, the most fertile areas to plant, and techniques to develop quality drinking water, improve their climate, and mitigate the impacts of global climate change. 

A major component of the TIST program includes reforesting badly degraded land on farms or in local communities. By planting trees, farmers provide their families and communities with firewood, building materials, and more. The trees provide fruit, fodder, fuel, windbreaks, and shade, and they also stabilize riverbanks. Plus, participants have access to health information and training (e.g., on COVID and HIV/AIDS prevention).   

To date, over 250,000 farmers have been involved with the TIST program, meaning that the program has directly benefited over a million people: the farmers, their families, and their communities. Together, these farmers have successfully planted more than 25 million trees and captured over 7 million metric tons of CO₂. Nurturing these trees is no easy feat: three to five seedlings are planted for every 15-year-old tree, and many seedlings succumb due to the impact of drought, floods, firewood use, and animals. For the surviving trees, carbon capture is quantified and verified, and certified greenhouse gas credits are then sold in the global carbon market. Under the program, farmers receive annual carbon pre-payments for each tree established and 70% of the net profit when credits are sold. 

Spotlight: Jeniffer Kithure

• Kenya Operational Leadership Council, TIST

  Kenyan TIST leader Jeniffer Kithure has traveled across the country and to projects in Uganda and has witnessed firsthand the impact of the program.   

  She has also learned nursery preparation and management, leading to higher survival rates for her trees. Now, Jeniffer passes on her experience and guidance to other smallholder farmers across Kenya and beyond. She enjoys her mission to help plant trees and cultivate communities.

• Dedicated mother, community leader

  Widowed after gang attack, Jeniffer raised, educated and supported four children through farming

• TIST Ambassador

  Jeniffer has traveled across Kenya and Uganda to teach smallholder farmers new, effective techniques 

• Helping Women

  Mentors women who join the program and teaches them new, income producing skills

Kenyan TIST leader Jeniffer Kithure has traveled across the country and to projects in Uganda and has witnessed firsthand the impact of the program.  

When TIST first came to her community in 2005, Jeniffer was raising four children following the death of her husband, a primary school teacher, who had been attacked by a gang on the way home from work. Jeniffer had no formal income, just farming, and by pure grit, she educated three of her children through fourth grade and one through eighth grade. 

Through TIST, Jeniffer and her neighbors formed a small group in her area. After receiving TIST training in conservation farming techniques, Jeniffer’s harvest increased dramatically, and the success of her small group meant that they took on the responsibility of recruiting and training new groups in their area.

She has also learned nursery preparation and management, leading to higher survival rates for her trees. Now, Jeniffer passes on her experience and guidance to other smallholder farmers across Kenya and beyond. She enjoys her mission to help plant trees and cultivate communities.  

“When you tell them to plant trees, they see it as a difficult job, or a job that has no meaning, and they just want to grow the food that is available today and not think about tomorrow,” she said. “But when the farmers started participating in TIST, they started planting trees, and now you can see that there are a lot of trees, and the environment is better.”  

More People of TIST 

Just as every drop of rain helps create the mightiest river, the efforts of each TIST farmer build stronger, more sustainable, and prosperous communities.  

TIST is truly a collaborative, ground-up, grassroots effort. The farmers own the program and spread the word across communities. At each monthly meeting, local farmers sit in a circle—no one is at the head of the table—and teach their neighbors how and where to plant trees, as well as new methods to better take care of their farms and families. All are responsible and accountable, joined in spirit to address the impact climate change has on their own communities, while providing pathways to greater food security, improved shelter options, and meeting basic needs.  

Most of all, they preach the value of planting and growing trees and the myriad ways they can change lives. 

Julia Wangui Mathara is a TIST farmer in the Suguroi Cluster within the Wiyumiririe region of Laikipia County, Kenya. In 2008, Julia discovered the program when TIST leader Daniel Ndumia introduced it to everyone in her village. 

Beyond sustainable farming and the ripple effect of planting trees in her community, Julia also learned critical life skills. Mazingira Bora, TIST’s monthly newsletter, introduced information about managing health issues, such as diabetes and blood pressure, as well as ways to improve financial well-being. 

“In TIST, I learned new ways of making money from selling seedlings from my tree nursery. There are many types of species: cypress, grevillea, pine, and casuarina. I have also added non-timber fruit seedlings like tree tomatoes, sweet banana, yellow passion, and purple passion. I am aware these non-timber seedlings won’t count for carbon, but I know they are good for nutrition.  

“I appreciate and practice the TIST value of ‘Low Budget, High Results.’ It works very well for me as it helps in budgeting effectively so I can buy food and pay school fees for my kids, and it is helping my husband to build a permanent house.” 

For Anthony Kiruja, the TIST program, and the carbon credits that have helped fund local tree planting efforts, has been essential to helping address climate change and building better lives in his community. 

“We are used to planting things like maize, beans, seasonal crops that depend on constant rain,” he said. “TIST are the ones who came up with the idea of planting fruit trees. When I prune this tree, I get firewood, but I can still get fruit from it. That fruit can feed my children, and I can sell it as well to benefit my family. TIST—and carbon credits—also pay me for that tree, meaning I benefit three to four times from that tree.” 

TIST’s support has had a lasting impact for Anthony. “The program has helped me learn to farm successfully,” he said. “They helped me pay for a tractor to farm the land, pay for fertilizer. To earn money is to see that the children have finished school and have something to eat.”  

TIST also helped change Alupo Martha’s life. As soon as she heard about the program in Soroti District, Uganda, she welcomed it “with [her] own two hands.” While she was aware of the benefits of tree planting prior to learning about TIST, the education she received encouraged her to begin planting trees around her compound and become a leader in her community. 

“Some community members are copying the way I am planting trees, the way I have planted trees around the boundaries, demarcating land to land,” she said. 

Martha now has around 370 trees of all different varieties, ranging from mango and avocado trees to trees for timber. Planting trees has created many co-benefits, from improving the community’s biodiversity to providing revenue that Martha can use to buy school lunches for her children and necessities like soap. 

Another farmer, Charity Wanjiku, appreciates TIST’s efforts to elevate women as community leaders. Through TIST, where she serves as the accountability person in her cluster, she has successfully trained other farmers in her community. 

“TIST promoted me from the ground up and makes me more courageous as a leader. It has helped me discover I had the capability of leading,” she shared. 

Today, Charity is not only a leader within her TIST cluster; she also uses her experience as a TIST trainer to engage with farmers from other clusters. Together, they discuss best practices to implement in their respective farms and communities. And Charity has even taken her leadership skills beyond TIST: she serves as a prominent figure in other community-based organizations in her region of Kenya, as well as in her church. When Charity takes the stage, everyone listens. 

The Primacy of Forests 

The grinding pressure to cut down forests for agricultural and residential use is a global challenge. It threatens the health of local communities and the future of our planet.  

The world’s forests store over 860 gigatons of carbon, equivalent to a century’s worth of annual carbon emissions. If we do not stop deforestation, not only will that carbon be released into the atmosphere, but the chief means of storing our current emissions will also end, dramatically increasing the pace of catastrophic climate change. Even as nations and major corporations work to reduce their carbon footprint, deforestation accounts for as much as a fifth of the world’s current greenhouse gas emissions.  

Since 1990, 420 million hectares of forest have been lost globally through deforestation. While the rate of deforestation has slowed over the past 30 years, the threat remains, and economic pressures could lead to a cascade effect that accelerates the climate crisis to the point of no return. 

Kenya, like many so many other developing nations, has faced high rates of deforestation. In the last 60 years, Kenya’s forest cover has dropped nearly 50%, with an annual estimated loss of 12,000 hectares. These forests host thousands of species of amphibians, birds, mammals, and reptiles, many of which are found only in Kenya, and their loss would be a staggering blow to biodiversity for the continent and the globe. 

Saving Forests with Verra and the Voluntary Carbon Market  

One of the most effective and important tools for protecting global forests is the voluntary carbon market (VCM). Global finance from the VCM supports local heroes like TIST farmers, enabling them to use that investment to plant more trees and incubate new woodland growth.  

Verra is at the forefront of this effort. It pioneered the groundbreaking science behind Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) and has been the leader in helping drive finance to high-integrity projects around the globe. 

Verra partners with TIST on nine forest projects in Kenya and Uganda, helping bring critical investment to local farmers, who use that revenue to expand afforestation efforts, purchase equipment, pay better wages, and feed, clothe, and educate their families.  

Jeniffer Kithure appreciates what Verra and the VCM help TIST farmers achieve. 

“Before TIST, we were not paid very much. For every tree planted you would only get a few shillings. But when we’re able to offset tons of carbon, it is now that the farmers have received good money,” she explained. “Verra helps us in the verification so that we can get the right people to use our carbon credits and then we receive that money to help our farmers. That’s thanks to the partnership with Verra.”