Branching Out: How we Team Up with Greenpop

We’ve taken a tree pledge

While we globetrot with our cameras, it feels relevant to do something to help compensate for our footprint. That’s why we started a tree pledge; for every person who travels with us, we pay Greenpop to plant one tree, put your name on it, and send you the GPS coordinates. No rounding up, no carbon-credit smoke and mirrors – just one actual tree, in actual soil, that you can look up on Google Earth when you’re back at your desk pretending to work. It’s a small gesture, but it’s an honest one. So who are Greenpop, you ask? And where is my little tree growing? Well, let’s dive in.

The Little Cape Town Project That Refused to Stay Little

Greenpop kicked off in 2010 when a handful of friends in Cape Town decided to plant 1,000 trees in one month, in under-greened communities in the city. It was supposed to be a one-off mission designed to balance the environmental cost of their worldly travels. But thirteen years later, they’ve planted well over 200,000 trees, invited 356,000 volunteers into the dirt, and turned into an organization with a substantial footprint (the green kind) across Sub-Sarahan Africa.  

Over the years, Greenpop expanded from greening schoolyards and community centres in Cape Town to rehabilitating degraded forest patches, establishing community orchards, and collaborating with rural communities across several countries. Today, they describe their work under broad but interconnected themes: forest restoration, urban greening, education for action, and nature-based events and experiences. 

Greenpop’s Mission: Trees and Beyond  

The Greenpop team does not treat tree-planting as an end in itself. As they put it, “Don’t just count trees, make trees count.” Their aim is to restore healthy ecosystems, and support communities – from improving soil and water quality, enhancing biodiversity, to creating green spaces in urban settings where children grow up, and families live. 

Their criteria for a “successful” project go beyond the number of saplings planted. They ask: Does this planting help revive degraded forests? Will the species support local wildlife? Is the local community involved and invested in caring for what is planted? Will the restored area contribute to climate resilience, clean air, water regulation, or local livelihoods? 

They avoid quick-fix solutions like “seed bombs,” plantation-style forestry with exotic species, or drone-dropped saplings. Instead they favour long-term, hands-on ecological restoration, often working closely with local communities and forest users. In short: the tree is not a commodity – it’s an investment in landscape, people, nature, and future.

Where Your Tree Ends Up

Depending on the context, your sponsored tree might be part of a broader forest-restoration effort (repairing degraded forest land), a community orchard, or an urban greening initiative – for example at schools, community centres, or other urban sites that need shade, green infrastructure, or food-growing trees. 

Most Penda trees get planted in South Africa, Zambia, Malawi or Tanzania – wherever Greenpop has active projects when your tour finishes. Examples of projects are; 

• In Cape Town and surrounding townships they often go into schools, creches, or community parks that need shade and fruit.
• In rural Zambia and Tanzania they’re usually indigenous species going back into degraded woodlands – miombo, mopane, acacia, baobab, whatever fits the ecosystem and helps local wildlife.
• In Malawi a lot end up in community agroforestry plots that stop soil washing away in the rainy season.

The trees themselves tend to be indigenous species – trees that belong to the landscape naturally, ones that support local ecosystems rather than disrupt them. Greenpop (and we, through our partnership) avoid “greenwashing”-style mass planting of fast-growing but ecologically alien trees. Instead we invest in ecological integrity. Real forests. Real people. Real hopes for long-term resilience.

Fancy Joining the Story?

Next time you book a Penda trip, know that one tree is already part of the deal. It’ll get planted for you, and you’ll get a PDF with the coordinates. It’s a reminder that somewhere out there a tree is photosynthesising because you came on a photo adventure with us. And if you want to plant more, just say the word – we’ll sort it. 

See you in the field.