Reforestation as Infrastructure, Not an Afterthought

It would have been easy to build CeloHT around two pillars — education and the agent network — and treat reforestation as a nice-to-have, funded when a grant happened to cover it. We deliberately didn't do that.

The connection isn't metaphorical

Haiti's deforestation crisis and its financial exclusion crisis aren't separate problems that happen to share a country. Communities whose economic security depends on agriculture and natural resources feel environmental degradation directly in their income. An initiative that improves financial access while ignoring the land underneath it is solving half a problem.

Structure, not slogans

Every tree counted in our reporting is tied to a verified planting record — photo and geolocation evidence, logged by a trained verifier — not a self-reported number. Participants who commit to verified planting and tracking can receive symbolic rewards in cUSD, creating a direct, auditable link between environmental action and financial inclusion.

What success looks like

We measure long-term survival rate, not just initial planting count. A thousand trees planted and forgotten is a worse outcome than three hundred trees planted, tracked, and still standing a year later.

See Reforestation for the full program detail, and Impact for how we report on it.