Trees, Water & People

Trees, Water & People (TWP) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization founded by Stuart Conway and Richard Fox in 1998, in Fort Collins, Colorado with the mission to improve people’s lives by helping communities to protect, conserve, and manage the natural resources upon which their long-term well-being depends. • Nationally, we are actively involved with helping to improve the lives of Native American families living on the reservations of the Great Plains. In these areas, where the winters are extremely long and harsh, Native Americans commonly spend more than half of their income on exorbitant utility bills. Together with our reservation-based partner, Lakota Solar Enterprises, we have built 800 economic solar heating systems and trained more than 180 tribal members in residential and facility-scale renewable energy applications. • Internationally, we work extensively in Central America and Haiti. Together, with our country-based partners, we support 20 community tree nurseries that produce 350,000 trees annually to aid in reforestation efforts, planting nearly 5 million trees to date. In addition, we have built more than 58,000 clean cookstoves. Each cookstove decreases a family’s need for firewood by 50-70%, as compared to standard open fire cooking, and reduces carbon emissions by at least 1.5 tons per year. In addition to cookstoves and tree planting, we have introduced thousands of solar lights to rural communities who live each day without access to any electricity.