We’ve paid out return on investments 3 times already. Twice from trees purchased in 2006 and once for trees purchased in 2007. And this year it is time for a return on the trees purchased in 2008. That four years pass so quickly can only be seen and understood when looking at time that is gone. Isn’t it weird that time that is ahead of us is not viewed the same way?

There was even a time when Better Globe was operating a plantation and I was down there for the first time with my family and the trees were 13 months old. Last summer when I went back, the same trees were 4.5 years old and the area has increased many times its original size. Most noticeable was however that a new plantation had been added in Nyongoro, where we are now getting ahead of the other plantations in terms of planting. With more experience, automated operations, and a massive support from everyone living nearby our plantation, Nyongoro has become a very exciting place to follow as a forest owner.

We already have more customers going down to Africa now in February to study the operation and meet all the people we touch and those who work with Better Globe. It is also in Nyongoro our famous Mango trees will be planted, the investment that makes it possible for Better Globe to give a 15 % yearly return on investment to tree owners around the globe.

I am incredible proud of what we all have managed to create in such a short period of time, since just 2006. Today we have a stable track record and have gotten many positive statements from important people in governments, authorities, and agencies of various kinds.

The Certificates are now available for download on My Pages

The certificates are now available for download from ”My Pages” for those of you who purchased trees in 2001. There are two different types of certificates where one is a certificate showing your tree ownership per year. It shows how many trees you have purchased during the year and what it means in terms of return on investment for you.

The second one is a special certificate showing that you have made 12 or more donations during the year. Those of you who did that have also become carbon neutral here in Sweden based on the fact that the average Swede releases 9 to 14 ton carbon dioxide per year. Or 20-24 ton per average family.

If you made 12 donations, you caused no less than 48 trees to be planted and you own 24 of them. These 48 trees absorb approximately 30 ton carbon dioxide which is more than the average private person in Sweden releases, so you can appreciate yourself for that and let others know.

Share Better Globe with others

I work with marketing and offering Better Globe services along with 100s of other Ambassadors and feel great joy and pride in what we do and we would like to contribute to let more people know about our work. All contributions are appreciated and as you hopefully already know, Better Globe is offering you a donation package free of charge if you assist us in this.

Read about how you easily can get a free donation package, month after month, just by doing what you probably are already doing, talk with more people.

Contact me, or any other Ambassador you already know, if there is anything we can do for you concerning Better Globe.

May the rest of your 2012 be great!

Lennart Göthe

February 15:

We’re going with Brussels Airlines from:

• OSLO 06:40 am
• BROMMA: 06:50 am
• GÖTEBORG:  06:55 am
• KØBENHAVN: 06:35 am

to Brussels, where we meet up to go to Nairobi together at 10:40 am. We have a layover of about 2 hours in Brussels.

We arrive in Nairobi around 11:30 pm local time. That includes a layover in Bujumbura in Burundi. We will be picked up at the airport in Nairobi and driven to the hotel, Methodist Guest House.

February 16:

We will get up early in the morning and go to the plantation in Kiambere. Jan Vandenabeele will meet us there and show us around and show us trees in different stages, from the first ones planted in 2007 to the brand new ones. We also get to plant our own tree.

After lunch at the plantation we will head to Mboti Primary School and Sosoma. We will stay the night at Mwingi Cottage Lodge on the way there and that is also where we will have our supper.

February 17:

We’re heading to Sosoma and will also visit Mboti Primary School – a school which Child Africa and Better Globe gutted and renovated and bought a water cistern for. Here we will meet the children attending the school, the teachers, and even a couple of parents. Afterwards we will go back to Nairobi via Mwingi Cottage Lodge where we have lunch. We will have our dinner at the hotel in Nairobi.

February 18:

We’ll head out early in the morning for Better Globe Mukuyu Farm, Test, and Training Center to look at the testing they’re doing there. We’ll have our lunch there and continue on to Kilaguni Lodge in Tsavo National Park. In the evening we’ll have our dinner at the lodge.

February 19:

After a leisurely and delightful breakfast we will enjoy a day of luxury at the lodge where you can relax by the pool. You can spend the evening in the restaurant where you can enjoy all the wild animals coming to drink from the waterhole below the lodge.

February 20:

We will leave early for Malindi. We will arrive at the hotel Coral Key in the afternoon. Dinner is at the hotel.

February 21:

We will go to the plantation in Nyongoro after breakfast. We will have lunch at the plantation and head back to the hotel in the afternoon for our dinner there.

February 22:

We leave early for Nairobi and have lunch on the way there at Hunters Lodge – a beautiful place – before returning to the Methodist Hotel in Nairobi where we will enjoy today’s dinner.

February 23:

We will have breakfast at the hotel before visiting the Better Globe Forestry’s head office in Nairobi. We’ll have lunch at Naivasha and go for a boat trip on Lake Naivasha. Afterwards we’ll head back to the hotel and end the day with a dinner at Carnivore, a very nice and unique restaurant.

February 24:

Visit at Karen Blixen/Kazuri where we’ll have lunch.
Head back to Nairobi and check out from the hotel.
Heading to the airport at 00:40

February 25:

We arrive in Brussels around 7:20 am.

BROMMA: From Brussel 09:00 To Bromma 11:25
GÖTEBORG: From Brussel 09:15 To Göteborg 11:05
KØBENHAVN: From Brussel 09:30 To Köbenhamn 11:10
OSLO: From Brussel 14:15  To Oslo 16:25

Other practical information

The price includes air fare, buss transport, a shared double room, visa in Kenya, and all meals. You need to notify us as soon as possible if you prefer a single room and there is an additional fee for that.

There has been a change in the schedule that adds a 120 € fee to cover an additional day at Kilaguni Safari Lodge in Tsavvo National Park where we will experience the African wild life up close.

Vaccinations

Contact your doctor or your immunization center for the vaccinations you need. We will be visiting areas in central Kenya along the coast line.

Passport

Make sure your passport is valid for at least 3 months after our return home.

Clothing:

Generally:  Don’t bring too much, laundry service is available at the hotels.
Hat: The sun is directly above us and very strong.
Sweater/jacket:  It can be chilly in the evenings so bring a warm sweater or a jacket.
Shoes: We can’t use sandals on the plantations so bring good shoes or at least sneakers. There are snakes in the grass even if we’ve never encountered any on our trips.
Dress code: Informal, but we encourage something nicer for the dinners in the evenings.
Bathing clothes: Several of the hotels feature pools and there will be opportunities to use them.

Travel Insurance

Better Globe is not a tour operator so everybody needs to get their own travel insurance.

Please bring…

Pen:  To take notes and fill out visa application
Vaccination Card:  You’ll get it at your vaccination center
Antibacterial gel or napkins:  The bacterial flora is different in Africa than in Scandinavia
Imodium or equivalent: For diarrhea
Mosquito repellant: There are mosquitos, especially in the evenings
Malaria pills: Get a prescription from your doctor or vaccination center
Motion sickness pills: If you need it, there will be many and long bus trips
Binoculars:  Is nice to have, but isn’t necessary
Camera:  You will appreciate it
Spending money:  Most things are very cheap in Kenya and the tour includes almost everything except drinks. If you bring 3,000 – 4,000 SEK you’ll have enough for drinks and souvenirs. We won’t have any time set aside especially for shopping, but there will be opportunities to purchase some souvenirs. Please note that it is customary to haggle over prices.

The difficulty was related to the limited possibilities we have of growing a cash crop because of the dry areas we are working in. That was also why we had to choose Acacia Senegal and gum arabic in the first place, because the tree grows well in semi-arid and arid land, which not many trees are doing.

However, when we finally because of many circumstances found out that this product and the market for it was too unsecure for us to be able to guarantee our tree owners the payback after the 5th. year, we had no option but to go down to 10%.

We could not gamble on these payments, we had to be sure. We were therefore looking into several other trees and different vegetables and nuts but could not find anything that could do well in our semi-arid land.

On the other hand we never gave up trying to find a solution and the 13th. December we got the first results of good news, it looked like 5000 hectares south in our land in Nyongoro could be used to plant minimum of 500,000 trees of a special kind of good “Apple mango”.

The 28th. December, after a trial planting of 30 trees and analyzing the growth of the seedlings, analyzing earth samples on the ground, measuring the temperature and finally looked at the last years rainfall we became sure about it; “We can grow 5000 hectares of “Better Mangos” in the southern part of our Nyongoro land”.

This means that from the 3rd. year after planting we get a cash crop which yield has no problem of paying the necessary 15% (2.25 Euros) for each tree.

THE GOOD NEWS THEREFORE IS; Better Globe will keep the 15% expected annual payback from year five also on the trees bought in 2012 and beyond.

We hope this will be good news for everybody and we therefore believe we have a good reason to wish you a HAPPY NEW BETTER GLOBE YEAR.

Best regards
Better Globe
Rino Solberg
Chairman

This was also the year were we took the step from manual work into mechanizing some of our work in the plantation and we also got recognition from EU, UN and the World Bank for the tree planting work we have managed to do in the dry land of Kenya.

Marketing

The first “Convention” was in Stockholm in March where the new website was launched by Lennart Göthe and Jan Bolmeson and it was well received by over 100 participants. More than 6 000 trees were sold in that weekend.

For the fourth year Better Globe arranged a trip in July to Uganda and Kenya for the members to visit Child Africa schools in Uganda and the tree plantations in Kenya. Everybody told us it was the greatest trip of their life and they really felt that Child Africa and Better Globe were doing a fantastic job and they were happy to be a part of this work. Read more on the trip:

• The first visitors to Nyongoro
• Visit to Mboti
• Back in Africa after 3.5 years

Leaders of Better Globe have been two trips to Cyprus and Greece this year and Better Globe Universal Ltd in Cyprus has been registered, with the aim to start the marketing of our program from Cyprus in 2012. The sale of the trees has been very good also in 2011 and more and more people have found out that buying trees is a good way of securing a long-term profit for their money. The plan for an even better marketing of Better Globe in 2012 is already clear and we think that will be very positive for everybody to find out as we go through 2012.

Rino and Julie Solberg was attending a Ugandan conference in London in August, where more than 1000 Ugandan living in diaspora were present and among them were the Speaker of Parliament in Uganda together with 6 ministers and 8 Ambassadors. Both Julie (Child Africa ) and Rino (investments in Uganda) gave presentations with high acclamations and Rino’s presentation is all over Internet already and is good PR for Better Globe.

Better Globe Marketing Inc. in the Philippines

For almost 2 years Better Globe has done testing on new ideas in our company Better Globe Marketing Inc. in the Philippines together with our Managing Director, the most well-known Celebrity there called “Mystica”. Thanks to her contacts Rino has been interviewed on national TV several times and have had meetings with some of the most influential people in the Philippines in order to market Better Globe.

We have chosen the Philippines because that is probably one of the worst countries to start with new Better Globe ideas in, because of poverty and corruption. However, we believe that when we succeed there we can succeed anywhere. All commissions have also been paid from the Philippine BG company in 2011. Rino Solberg, as well as Mystica, got awarded “The Global Excellence Award” for Civic and Environment Advocacy and this was shown on national TV included a 3 minute video presentation of Better Globe and it was also published in one of the biggest newspapers in the Philippines.

Better Globe Forestry in Kenya

The planting of trees in Kenya has also taken a new era in 2011. Due to manual clearing of land and getting seedlings for Mukau to date, tree planting has been a cumbersome and expensive process. However, by the end of the year we have started to clear land with our new bulldozer and this will make a big step forward in the speed of which we are planting trees ahead.

We have also gotten the first 1000 cloned seedlings from the Genth laboratory in Belgium and even though the first 500 died because of wrong packaging for transport the last 500 has worked better and most of them are still tested and we are learning a lot from these first trial of clones. In 2011 we planted more trees than ever before and we have now reached a new level of speed in every area we work, grafting, collection of seeds, nursery work and planting, as well as watering and fertilizing. Jean-Paul Deprins and Jan Vandenabeele have done a great job also this year and are well prepared for higher speed in 2012.

Our goal by the end of 2011 was to have planted all the trees that were sold. We did not meet this goal because of several different circumstances beyond our control. One of them was a hail storm that has not been seen in Kenya for more than 12 years. That alone killed more than 55,000 seedlings and fungus killed another 20,000 seedlings. This was so unique that we have decided to publish Jan Vandenabeele’s report about it to everybody (attached PDF).

However, we have already started to mitigate the consequences of the hail storm and hope to be able to save some seedlings as we go. On the other hand, we still think we will be able to “catch up” on the planting in a not too distant future and optimism still prevails in Kenya in that respect.

The World Bank

The World Bank arranged a conference in Kenya about “Mobilizing Private Investment in Trees and Landscape Restoration in Africa” and MITI Magazine was chosen to be the conference magazine to report and do interviews with the participants. The representatives were very pleased with the job we did and Better Globe was mentioned many times during the conference for their tree planting in semi-arid land in Kenya.

Even one of the Communication officers from the World Bank, Flore de Préneuf, (Program on Forests PROFOR) travelled to Kiambere and interviewed some of the people working for us and has written about this in a report on the World Bank website.

Andrew Steer, the World Bank’s new climate change envoy, also used Better Globe as an example in his PowerPoint presentation on how things should be done in the dry land in Africa. We have managed to get his presentation and on page 29 and page 31 he is showing and mentioning Better Globe Forestry as an “investment in trees project” and uses the words “Robust Governess” about our project. We think this is great and we look forward to working with the World Bank in other projects in the years ahead. They also subscribe to MITI magazine and is therefore well informed about Better Globe.

On page 14 in MITI Magazine No 10 in an article called “Blazing a trail” the former EU Development Director Vaflahi Meite wrote that Better Globe Forestry introduces an innovative business model for sustainable development:

“When I met the Chairman and the Managing Director of Better Globe Forestry Ltd (BGF) in 2007 in my office, I had some doubts about their project concept. Indeed, expecting European business people to invest in planting trees in Kenya, with an estimated payback period of 20 years, was very surprising to me. Four years later, I have come to appreciate what has been achieved by BGF so far. The unique model grounded on the partnership with the landowners to develop commercial plantations on arid and semi-arid lands (ASAL), where the trees are not competing with food production, is praiseworthy in the spirit of sustainable development.”

His article also says that if other companies could do what Better Globe is doing it will help to solve the problems of the dry land in Africa.

Child Africa

A lot of things have also happened in Child Africa in 2011. Three of the Child Africa children graduated from 3 universities this year and that is something we are very proud of. These children were Isaac, Barbara and Alex and Child Africa decided to offer them a job and they therefore did not have to go into the huge unemployment line which is in Uganda.

One of the highlights for Child Africa is the visit from Better Globe customers. This time was very special because the BG members brought approximately 140 uniforms for the brass band, which was collected by Einar Formo in Norway and they managed to fit them during the evening and had all uniforms on in the parade through the Kabale town the day after we arrived. The performance of the children with song and dance was spectacular and they are getting better and better every year.

The plans of building a school for 2 000 children has been worked on and particularly the making of bricks has been a big work during the year. Rosemary Søyland, our Executive Director in Norway, has with success started to sell bricks online and also in Sweden Malin Liljegaard has made a website ready to do the same. Child Africa has so far produced about 180,000 bricks and we will continue until 1.9 million bricks are produced. Child Africa is now in the state of starting to finance the building of the new school and we need all the help we can get.

As Child Africa has grown fast the last couple of years, Julie Solberg who has been responsible for all areas of Child Africa in Uganda to date, needed to have some more help in running all operations and we hired a new Executive Director (Abel Mwebembezi) for Uganda, who had a lot of experience in running charity organizations. He has already proven capable of the tasks and we hope he will be a great asset to our organization in the years to come. Better Globe’s contribution has also this year increased from last year and will be a great help in building Child Africa every year.

I want to take this opportunity to thank everybody, all our staff, Ambassadors and customers for the great contribution you have done for Better globe in 2011 and hope to work close with you all also in 2012.

We Wish You a Happy New Better Globe Year in 2012!

Better Globe
Rino Solberg
Chairman

To make it easier for you to gift a tree, there is now an option to create a gift card, in pdf, that you can either print out and give or email to the recipient of your gift. Click on the gift card on the right for a larger image.

To gift a Better Globe tree, follow these steps:

Steg 1. Logga in på ditt Better Globe-konto med ditt kundnummer

Step 1. Log into your Better Globe account with your customer number

Log into your Better Globe account by entering your customer number in the login field in the top right of the web page.

Step 2. Click on ”Gifts” in the menu to the left

Once you’ve entered your pages, select “Gifts” in the main menu to the left. There you can select between the following four options:

• Tree (gift internally) – it means that you can gift a tree to someone who’s already a customer of Better Globe’s and have a customer number. It’s practical if you give it repeatable, for example as savings for a child or grandchild. Your gift will be added to their existing trees.
• Donations (gift internally) – is about the same as the above, but it’s a donation that you’re gifting to an existing customer of Better Globe’s. The gift consists of a donation package of 2 trees for the person receiving the gift, 2 trees that are donated, 500 liters of water, 1.50 € for micro financing, and 1.50 € for school constructions.
• Gift to an external person – this is the option for giving one or more trees to someone who is not currently a customer of Better Globe’s. A new account will be created for the person that the trees will be associated with.

In all the three cases described above, you can select between using your credit or debit card, or the money you have credited to your Better Globe account, if applicable.

Step 3. Print out or email a gift letter

When you’re gifting a tree or a donation package  you can also print out a gift letter by clicking on the last menu item under Gifts called ”Generate gift letter”. You can either print out the pdf-file or attach it to an email and send it digitally to the gift recipient. Here you can also get an overview of all gifts you have given.

Step 4. Tell others about Better Globe

If you gift a tree or donation package, don’t forget the most important part – to include information about Better Globe and everything your gift contributes to. At least watch the movie with them so they can appreciate your gift even more.

If your friend then wants to continue to purchase trees or donation packages on a monthly basis, it can in the long run contribute to you getting your donation package for free from Better Globe as a thank you for your help, read more about it here.

If you have any questions about the above, don’t hesitate to contact us!