We at Yoga Awakening Africa just love this Tree friendly initiative by Food and Trees for Africa. So consider getting your yoga studio and students involved in planting a couple of trees in your neighbourhood to brighten and green-up your suburb.

This upcoming Arbor Month, September 2013, a greening initiative will be launched that will hopefully go beyond South Africa’s borders, the Trees for Africa Arbor Challenge!

The concept is to challenge all schools, communities, companies, government and individuals to plant and look after as many trees as possible in the month of September.

Food & Trees for Africa is developing a website with a very sophisticated, yet user-friendly, social platform for TREEthusiasts to register on a regisTREE where they will also be able to sign a TREEty.

Everybody is invited to register at http://trees.co.za/tfaa-challenge/register.html. You can also register through Facebook if you prefer.

Here you can interact with the site and others, and post your tree planting events. Once you have planted your trees, or hosted a tree planting event, you can upload a photograph or video and record how many trees you have planted.

The trees.co.za site application will allow you, as a communiTREE member, to visit your own profile and click on a Google map to set the position where you planted. This position will be shown in your profile on the global invenTREE map.

The Trees for Africa Arbor Challenge will energise a new excitement and understanding of the value of trees in our lives, their role in balancing the climate, providing food and other crucial resources, enhancing vital biodiversity and much, much more.

Through joining the challenge and interacting with each other we will catalyse more greening and awareness.

Everyone is encouraged to plant trees on their own, or through any initiative, at home, at school or at the office.

Or, Food & Trees for Africa can facilitate tree plantings for you on request through the thousands of applications from disadvantaged communities and schools on their files. These trees will be planted through the award winning and very established Trees for All and Trees for Homes programmes.

FTFA is launching this Trees for Africa Arbor Challenge with initial partners the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (DAFF), Media 24, Primedia, the South African Nursery Association (the tree growers). Many of FTFAs corporate partners will join this challenge, along with thousands of social media followers and FTFAs ambassadors.

The website technology supports a community application that allows members to shout their views (i.e. “We just planted 10 trees”), activity stream and announcements. The map supports Google’s street view and friends’ locations, according to their privacy settings. This is a green social media tool that can also show the friendship networks (and events with attendees) using polylines, videos and photo albums.

We hope to inspire the public, schools, companies and as many as possible to plant and care for  thousands of trees this Arbor Month!

To find out more and join the Trees for Africa Arbor Challenge contact info@trees.org.za or call Lindsey on 011 656 9802.