Why did we do it? Why risk everything to set up a woodland bushcraft centre in the heart of Derbyshire? It’s a fair question and one that I will attempt to answer here.
“You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference and you have to decide what kind of a difference you want to make.”
Jane Goodall
TRIBE is our attempt to make a positive difference and has been a work in progress for approximately 4 years, founded by Peter Sutherland and joined shortly afterwards by myself, Alison.
The reason for TRIBE coming into existence stems from the many social and environmental crises that we as a country and a planet are experiencing; inequality, loss of biodiversity, struggling education systems, and deforestation both at home and abroad, all led us to the belief that we need to do something about it. although all are important, I’m only going to touch on the environmental side of things in this post.
Environmental Crises & Deforestation
We’ve been hearing about these for decades, finding their way into our classrooms, newspapers, and social media feeds. When Pete set up TRIBE, it was due to it’s potential to have a positive contribution towards efforts to halt deforestation, particularly of the tropical rainforests that are so important for our continuation as a species. How would we make an impact? That wasn’t clear, and even now is something we are still working on, but the ideas fall into 2 broad categories:
Education
To us at TRIBE, our aim is to reconnect adults and children to the wonder of the natural world in one of the UK’s beautiful ancient woodlands. We work under the principle – inspired by the two ladies below, among others – that if people experience and interact with nature, if they see the value in keeping it intact and develop a love for it, then they are more likely to want to protect it. We are all part of nature, sometimes it just takes immersion in it to remember..
“Only if we understand, will we care. Only if we care, will we help. Only if we help, will all be saved”
Jane Goodall
“You cannot protect the environment unless you empower people, you inform them, and you help them understand that these resources are their own, that they must protect them.”
Wangari Maathai, Kenyan social, environmental and political activist, Forest Protector, and 2004 Nobel Prize winner.
Charitable support
Although we ultimately want to be involved in protecting the “lungs of the world” on a large scale, until that point we aim to donate 10% of our profits to support the work of those organisations already working on solutions to rainforest destruction. As time goes by and our business expands, we will be publishing these contributions on our website so keep an eye out in a few years.
What now?
Now that you know how TRIBE fits into the bigger picture and why we have chosen to set it up, please have a look around the rest of the website to get an idea of what we offer.
In the meantime, I’ll leave you with this thought and welcome you to look deep into nature with us.
“Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.”
Albert Einstein
