Andrea Koehle Jones, Founder and Executive Director
Journalist, author and environmental entrepreneur Andrea Koehle Jones founded both Love Trees and The ChariTREE Foundation on Earth Day 2006 in an effort to educate and empower kids about the environment. Andrea and her board of directors volunteer their time so more of your donations can go to helping kids help the planet.

“If children are going to make a lifelong commitment to protect the environment for themselves and future generations, they first need time to explore the wonders of nature,” said Andrea Koehle Jones, Executive Director of Love Trees. She says one of the best ways to learn about the environment is to plant, care for and watch a seedling grow into a magnificent tree.

Love Trees is a young, environmental non-profit business organization rooted in a philosophy that powerful solutions to climate change should involve educating and empowering kids – the future stewards of the environment.

Andrea has had a connection to trees since she was a little girl. The aerial photo on left is a 2010 photo of the first 5,000 trees she ever planted with her father at their farm more than 20 years ago. This was part of a family project to plant 120,000 trees on their property near Honeywood, Ontario. Whether she was planting trees, looking over the shoulder of her mother, an artist who specialized in painting trees, spending a month in the hospital after falling from a tree or crashing her car into a tree at 17, she feels the universe was telling her to pay attention to trees. And she did.

She founded both Love Trees and The ChariTREE Foundation on Earth Day 2006 to:

• give kids a Love Tree as an educational tool to as many children as we can;

• give businesses and individuals a chance to help kids and the planet by paying to have trees planted by the powerful Children’s Wish Tree program or by purchasing tree planting certificates. Love Trees then donates and distributes tree seedlings to children through schools and kid’s organizations in North America and Africa.

• offer children, in a world where kids have less time and fewer opportunities to connect with nature,  a tree of their own to plant and make a wish for the planet. We think this is a great way to educate and empower the future stewards of the environment;

• give the planet more trees;

• give environmental charities a portion of profits.

Love Trees plants trees in Canada, the United States and Africa (and next Haiti) by donating trees to kids through schools and children’s organizations. We also source the correct species for the region and ship trees at no cost to the schools, organizations, teachers and students. For international projects we partner with organizations with tree planting expertise on the ground in that country like:

African Community Project plants trees for Love Trees with children in Eastern Province, Zambia near Mumbi Village in Petauke District.

Seeds for Africa is a UK-based charity that works with with primary school children helping them to establish kitchen vegetable gardens and fruit tree orchards. Love Trees specifically supports their fruit tree planting programs.

Andrea has a Masters degree in journalism from the University of Western Ontario and has worked for CBC Newsworld in Toronto, Yellowknife and Vancouver as well as for various Canadian and international environmental organizations. Andrea is also an award-winning documentary producer, author of the The Wish Trees and she recently launched The Green News Network - Canada’s environmental news network. You can follow her on Twitter to stay current on the latest environmental news headlines.

Andrea Koehle Jones was in Copenhagen during the United Nations Climate Change Conference in December. Earlier in the  year she was in Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa planting fruit trees with students at some of the poorest schools in the world. The HIV infection rate among students was reported to be 60%. Watch video.
“There’s something so hopeful about planting trees,” said Koehle Jones. “I’ll never forget the children we planted trees with in Kwazulu-Natal and I’ll never stop trying to bring more children trees.”