Fruitful Office gives customers a new reason to enjoy delicious fresh fruit thanks to their tree planting initiative in Africa.
Each fruit basket purchased from Fruitful Office ensures one tree is planted in Malawi in Africa by the Fruitful Office team, and so far the campaign has been extraordinarily successful.
How does it work?
As deforestation is one of the biggest environmental problems facing Malawi at the moment, Fruitful Office decided to focus on planting trees that could grow quickly and easily, such as guava and papaya fruit trees. Each of these trees takes only 3 to 5 years to grow, ensuring that the campaign quickly had an impact on the lives of the locals. Best of all, such trees are very easy to maintain so they are perfect for Malawi’s climate and environment.
The campaign includes the Malawian communities, helping them to grow and prosper by providing locals with tree seedlings, equipment and guidelines. Families, farmers and even schools are all involved in the project, looking after the trees and ensuring that they grow to fruition. The trees are planted in orchards, woodlots and around household perimeters, and larger farm cooperatives are able to plant 20-30,000 seedlings in nursery each year!
Since the campaign began, local farmers have managed to develop a new mango variety that is even tastier than the mangoes that used to grow in Malawi, thus ensuring that the campaign is not only working to stabilise Malawi’s forests, but also to improve the quality of its fruit.
The locals are not left to their own devices either, as part of the campaign focuses on providing training sessions for each group so they can maintain the trees on their own. As a result, the communities not only benefit from the fruit the papaya and guava trees provide, but they also benefit from other quick growing trees like senna siamea, grown to provide firewood. Thanks to this, these trees can even serve as a means of income generation!
Who is involved?
Fruitful Office is running the campaign in association with RIPPLE Africa, a UK charity working in Malawi. Clients are kept up to date on how the campaign is going, with new updates sent every three months. Since the campaign began, Fruitful Office has helped to plant over 3 million trees!
There are now plans to take the campaign even further to the deforested region of Muzuzu, with a population of 200,000 people. Together with RIPPLE Africa, Fruitful Office has set a target of raising 300,000 trees in Muzuzu this year. The campaign works closely with local government as well, who have helped in making introductions to local farmers and communities while offering advice on the best kinds of trees to grow in each area.
Fruitful Office’s co-founder and business development director Vasco de Castro states that the campaign is one of the company’s proudest achievements, helping to mitigate the effects of global warming and deforestation while providing an income support to local communities.you may also read Disaffected Social Media Users Flock to Vero.
The campaign is a superb way to help local African communities grow and thrive while ensuring access to fruit and firewood, ensuring that the benefits of Fruitful Office’s fruit baskets are felt far beyond the reach of a regular office. Continuing to support the reforestation programme in Malawi is a big priority for the company, and one that will continue to expand as the company continues to thrive.
