One Woman, One Watershed, Hundreds of Families Growing Stronger Through One Tree Planting Solution.

When you meet Pilirani, she strikes you first by how young she is. At just 22, she carries the weight of responsibility that would challenge anyone twice her age. 

She lives in Luka Village with her husband and young child, while also supporting the needs of her wider family. 

Like most families here in Malawi, livelihood depends entirely on what the land can give. But the land has been giving less and less every year. Soil that used to be black and hold moisture now dries out too quickly and bakes into a sun-split rust red. 

Rains fall too hard and too fast. This drags the topsoil downhill and in heavy rainfall mountainsides slip causing devastation.  Maize crops struggle and harvests are poor. There is little to no money to try anything else. 

That’s where community projects step in. Pilirani is the secretary of the women’s tree-planting group in her village. She helps organise group activities, she supports others, and has stepped effortlessly into an unassuming leadership role that has stretched her and given her purpose and hope. She went to school, and she knows she can build a better, more prosperous life for her family. She wants her child to grow up with a better, more reliable future than the one she inherited. 

Often when we think of people living in poverty, we think that they’re stuck there. However, evidence shows, and our history proves, that given opportunity and support, poverty can change in a heartbeat. 

And that’s exactly what the Tree Project is doing in Malawi. Giving households, whole communities the opportunity to step out of poverty and away from the bind of failing harvests.

Grabbing this opportunity is exactly where real, lasting change begins. 

Luka Village sits within a 56 km² watershed in Southern Malawi — one connected landscape of hills, streams, farms, forests and homes. When trees disappear and soil weakens in one part of the watershed, the effects are felt everywhere else. Water becomes unpredictable. Fields flood or dry out too fast. Food production drops. Household vulnerability rises. 

And because the entire watershed is connected, every family’s fate is tied to the health of this shared land. This is why the Tree Project is both working on a micro scale with individual households and a macro scale to protect land, rivers and the future.

Nothing in nature is isolated; our natural systems are all connected, and when working towards long-term impact and long-term change, we have to take ecological principles into consideration. 

The Tree Project’s work focuses on this specific area, there’s no scattered planting or one-off activities. 

The principles of the project are slow, steady, community-led restoration across a single, shared watershed — where change in one place strengthens life in every other. 

The Tree Project isn’t about planting huge numbers of trees or filling hillsides with a single species or even a collection of species. We don’t mass tree-plant or establish monocultures of poorly thought-out species.

What we do is micro-level community-led restoration that improves daily life. All these small pockets of forest, managed by families benefiting from them, amass into a huge annual number of trees planted in Malawi.

Monthly support helps families receive locally chosen tree species grown in community nurseries, fruit trees that bring nutrition and future income, training in agroecological farming, soil restoration techniques that stabilise the land. Plus tools and materials that make planting and growing trees possible. We call this donor community ROOTED.

On top of the practical aspects of the programme, families receive training, education and upskilling in agroforestry. The project is designed around one goal: helping the families who live in this watershed build long-term environmental and economic resilience. 

Today, the community nursery in Luka Village is full of seedlings — mangoes, guavas, acacias, moringas — chosen by families with the Tree Project team. Behind the nursery are the fruit trees planted last season. They are alive and growing, the community tells us of the ground holding moisture for longer. After heavy rain, the soil stays where it is instead of washing away. 

Pilirani’s women’s group meets regularly to learn, plan, and support one another. The confidence in the community is noticeable. The tree project has seen so much success over the years, that communities are jumping at the opportunity to take part, rebuilding land is giving people hope and change beyond their wildest dreams. 

Pilirani says it simply: “I am still young and developing. I want to take part in things that will secure a bright future for me and my children.” 

ROOTED gives you a simple way to support families like Pilirani’s in a tangible way, where you get to be a month fly-on-the-wall to see what’s going on!

Actually, in communities, in fields, talking to real people. (The ABSOLUTE marvel of modern technology).

As a Rooted member, you not only receive monthly real-life updates from the field, you’ll also receive a monthly email sharing stories from farmers, photos from nurseries and field days, and progress you can see and understand. Sometimes, there might not be progress, sometimes nurseries are broken into, or flood, or a goat demolishes them. When that happens we don’t sugarcoat life for you, we show you how hard life is, and how together, we can rise in setbacks.

You’ll have a direct connection to a community working hard for its future. You’ll know where your support and funds are going, and you’ll meet the people not just benefiting but experiencing huge transformation in their lives because of it. 

If you want to support families like Pilirani’s as they restore their land, strengthen their livelihoods, and grow a more hopeful future for £50 a month, you can join Rooted today.

JOIN ROOTED