About The Tree Foundation

The Tree Foundation was established in January 1996 by the two children of a successful Sri Lankan businessman who emigrated to Great Britain after growing up in a village in Southern Sri Lanka near the coast. Numerous trips to Sri Lanka dramatically illustrated to them the wide gaps in standards of living between the developed and the developing world, and they started the Tree Foundation in the hopes of giving something back. While the charitable desire provided the impetus, the foundation’s mission has evolved to one of providing not just charity, but the practical tools to aid Sri Lanka’s rural populations in their efforts to develop a sustainable future. The foundation currently provides micro-grants to assist rural communities in Sri Lanka to thrive and prosper on an ongoing basis with minimal risk to the environment. The foundation currently works in the fields of education and micro-business development. Specific smaller projects are also undertaken in environmental, health, peace, gender and racial matters. Above all the foundation is about local people being involved in shaping their own destinies, of delivering what is actually needed by listening to local communities, working with and having local people on the board.

These issues in the weeks following the December 2004 Tsunami disaster have become even more crucial as people are in desperate need of the resources to help rebuild their lives from nothing. This means jobs, homes, and getting children back into education. The Tree Foundation is very privileged in having a direct grass roots contact with the people who need this help the most. It cannot help everyone, but it can make a very real difference to the thousands of people in the rural communities it does work in.