We kicked off our seed collection for the 2025-26 tree planting season at Chisengo village in Chongwe with a planning meeting where we met with he vice village headman, young people and several key women who are going to the contact people for our native tree seed collection.

The trees are starting to drop their seeds, with monkey bread already ripe for collection. The other seeds we will be collecting are musangu (Faidherbia albida), Gliricidia Sepium, Luecaena and kabunga (Julbernardia globiflora)

Julbernardia globiflora is key for us because it is the tree that is mostly cut down for charcoal. Because of this reason, Chongwe has experienced rampant deforestation as people have cut down Julbernardia globiflora over the last 20 years. We are working with former charcoal burners who we are paying to help us identify trees and collect the Julbernardia globiflora seeds. They will later be involved in the seedling care and planting of the trees in January.

We met over 20 people at the community football ground in Chisengo, most of whom we worked with last year when we planted 1000 Luecaena trees and 500 Faidherbia Albida trees.

These 20 villagers will be expected to each collect atleast 3kgs of seeds of the varieties of native trees that they will sell to Green Gold Social. This way, we are providing a sustainable incomeand providing long term and recurring green jobs.

The purpose of the meeting was to agree on the price of a kilogram of each tree seed Green Gold Social will be buying from them.

The seed collection started with Musekese (Monkey Bread) this month and will end in December with Musiniga (Black Plum)

The seed collection is part of our preparation for the launch of our Chongwe Reforestation Project where we are restoring over 1 kilometre of degraded land due to charcoal burning by planting 20,000 native trees and helping farmers become climate resilient through agroforestry.