During February 2019, a small Word Forest team went to Kenya to perform our annual monitoring and evaluation tasks and other duties, including doing preliminary research on the next schools we hope to build.
For a week of our stay, we were joined by an amazing filmmaker, Tim Tyson Short.
We commissioned Tim to capture stories from the remarkable tree planting community we work with in Boré. He shot some incredible footage, including many snippets from women’s empowerment group, Mothers of the Forest.
The work culminated in a 40 minute documentary called #TreesAreTheKey which highlights what can be achieved with a bit of joined up thought and action: take care of the people who take care of the forests, and both can flourish. It also explains why the world needs far more trees planted in the tropics and how the work we’re doing is helping remove CO2 and other pollutants from the atmosphere, at a speedy rate. Crucially, at a local level, it’s also alleviating hunger and poverty.
#TreesAreTheKey
Our documentary has been narrated by Oscar winning actress, Kate Winslet and we’re thrilled that she kindly agreed to help our little charity by doing so.
#TreesAreTheKey is going to premiere as a fundraiser on Wednesday 2nd October 2019 at the Marine Theatre in Lyme Regis. Following the screening, Tim and members of our Team who volunteered and worked with the community in Kenya, will be there for a Q&A session, giving the audience a clearer insight to the challenges the community face on a daily basis, living on the front line of climate change.
We’re going to plant at least one tree for every ticket sold and we’ll buy a few building materials too for our next classroom.
Tickets Please
Tickets are available from our shop and also from the Marine Theatre and the Tourist Information Centre (the latter two will incur a small booking fee) but if you buy them from our shop, you’ll just pay the ticket price.
Click here to secure yours and I know it’s a bit of a line, but they really are going fast…
Beyond the premiere, #TreesAreTheKey will be available to watch free of charge in an armchair of your choice, with a kind request for a donation, but not a stipulation. We’ll be encouraging environmental groups around the world to put on fundraising community screenings in village halls, schools, universities, prisons etc which will help us plant more of the trees the planet desperately needs.
If you’re keen to organise a fundraising screening for us in your community, The British Film Institute have created a brilliant guide: 10 Ways to Promote Your Community Cinema – it’s a must read! If you’re up for doing one, drop us a line and we’ll do all we can to help you promote it.
Dreaming On
The Word Forest Organisation is run by optimists – despite the dark environmental times we’re living through – and we’re hoping #TreesAreTheKey is going to help us find more members and corporate partners, who will enable us financially to shift our charity up to the next level. We are bursting out of our home office and we need to expand into a proper space. We have a variety of roles that we’d love to fill as employers and we need a bigger bank of volunteers, locally and remotely.
Here’s hoping the film will bring us closer to meeting those vital needs so we can replicate what we’re doing in the tropics to help our planet.
Ways You Can Help
- Watch and share the trailer on your social media
- Pop a donation into our coffers to help
- Join us at the premiere
- Put on a screening in your community
The (Very Excited) Team
