Our Story
Early 2019
IDEA
In March, F4F co-founders got together in a Mumbai cafe to decide whether to launch a forests
restoration and protection non-profit that uses the Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) model to
fight climate change at scale (Hint: it was a unanimous Yes!)
BIRTH
F4F was officially incorporated on 12 December 2019; our then small but mighty team of 4 people began meeting local leaders and farmers in the drought-prone Dhawalgaon village (in Ahmednagar District) to explain our model
Dec 2019
Jan 2020
...AND GO
Mr. Ramesh Mengawade (Executive Chairman, Opus Consulting Solutions) donated 0.5 acres of his land
to pilot our afforestation model in Dhawalgaon (before we began work on actual farmer land);
we planted 800 native trees on it with a survival rate of 95%
FULL STEAM AHEAD
After suspending field operations for a few months
due to COVID-19, we began afforesting our first farmers land belonging to Ganesh
Dhawale, which had been lying barren for years due to his inability to cultivate
because of erratic rainfall; we planted 8000 trees on 2 acres of land.
July 2020
Jan 2021
PROTECTING FORESTS
F4F in collaboration with researchers at the University of California Berkeley and J-PAL began work on a pilot program to assess the PES model for forest protection and reforestation in Raigad, Maharashtra with a 120 farmers across 24 villages. The pilot is funded by the King Climate Action Initiative at J-PAL
SCALING UP
F4F began working with Gram Sabhas in Gadchiroli District Maharashtra
to implement a large-scale reforestation and forest protection program across 30,000
acres that will help 8000 tribal households
June 2021
2022
Based on our learning from the first two years of our existence,
we will continue to scale our impact in our four project locations in
Maharashtra- Raigad, Ahmednagar, Beed and Gadchiroli- to advance
our mission to fight climate change and make India's
rural communities more climate change resilient