About Us

Our purpose is to accelerate the restoration of the world’s forests

The world’s forests are disappearing at an alarming rate, and we need restoration efforts to move faster.

Our mission is to enable people to improve their livelihoods by growing trees.

We work with smallholder farmers to restore forests.

The world’s forests are not being restored fast enough because people see more opportunities to cut trees down than to grow them. The land stewarded by smallholder farmers collectively represents one of the biggest opportunities to restore the world’s forests, but farmers often face barriers to make land-use choices in favour of growing trees. Taking Root works with farmers to remove those barriers so that growing trees improves their livelihoods.

Our Team

Meet the team accelerating the restoration of the world’s forests.

We bring together experience and expertise across smallholder forestry, carbon project development, remote sensing, and technology.

Meet the Team

Values

Our values guide our work and culture.

We do it for nature.

Be in service of those stewarding the land.

Always pursue more impact.

Face the unknown with courage.

Help each other grow.

Our roots

In 2006, a serendipitous meeting in Nicaragua between Kahlil Baker (Taking Root co-founder) and Elvin Castellon (APRODEIN co-founder) led to a shared vision of growing trees in a way which brought value to farmers. Each returned home and assembled a team to make this vision a reality. Elvin founded the Nicaragua NGO, APRODEIN, with Fanny Godoy, Elsa Gonzales, Celio Lennin, the late Doctor Rigo Cordoba Roberto, Alexis Martinez, and Marcos Ponce to build a community led reforestation program. Kahlil returned to Montreal to found the Canadian organization, Taking Root, with Brooke van Mossel-Forrester, Laura Howard and Samuel Gervais to provide technical support and connect the program to philanthropic and carbon financing. A year later, trees were being planted by farmers. From those first few trees now stand mighty forests and a model being replicated around the world.

Left: 2007, the first trees being planted in Limay, Nicaragua

Join our impact driven team?