What we do
Read about our programs
Since 2005, Community Friends has been helping people create sustainable livelihoods through education and land restoration. Today, our primary focus is educating students through our Carbon Game program, an engaging way for children in schools around the world to learn about conservation and mitigation.
Climate Change
We provide climate education in schools. We believe that educating the next generation about carbon concentrations, conservation, and mitigation is one of the greatest impacts we can have in our work.
Investing in Women
Climate solutions require meeting the global challenges of gender inequality and climate change by empowering women through economic development. We invest in women-owned enterprises.
Land Stewardship
Reforestation and land restoration help provide climate solutions for future generations and the planet. We support land trusts that preserve green spaces, watersheds and protect habitat.
Renewable Energy
Transitioning from fossil fuels to renewable energy is essential for lowering carbon concentrations in the atmosphere. We invest in projects that reduce fossil fuels with renewable energy sources.
Carbon Offsets
Purchase carbon offsets for your family, friends and workplace. Carbon offsets make great gifts and help support our climate change education program through the Carbon Game.
Carbon Game
You can help bring the Carbon Game to a school near you. It’s a fun way to teach students and their families about CO2 concentrations, conservation, and mitigation.
Why we exist
Welcome to Community Friends
Seevali Ratnakara
Welcome!
About us
Mission, History and programs
Community Friends’ mission and programs are built on a 40-year history between our founding president and a Sri Lankan community service non-profit organization called Sadaham Mithuru Samuluwa. The association and friendship first started in 1980 through a joint program at the University of Puget Sound, USA and Sri Lanka’s University of Peradeniya.
While our first programs provided relief efforts in a remote Sri Lankan village devastated by the 2004 tsunami, today Community Friends is focused on community investing and climate change solutions. We believe that climate change is the greatest challenge to social and environmental justice. A stable and safe climate is the foundation of life and our livelihoods and a basic need of all people.
Community Friends’ strategies have focused on high-impact investments in land restoration, renewable energy, providing critical access to capital and helping people create sustainable livelihoods. In April 2011, we developed the Carbon Game that we are now bringing to schools in the USA, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Ghana and Zimbabwe. The Carbon Game is an engaging way to teach children about carbon dioxide concentrations in our atmosphere and ways they can help through conservation, mitigation, and education. The program teaches students about climate change and the important task of measuring carbon emissions. We believe that educating the next generation about climate change solutions is one of the greatest impacts we can have in our work. The success of the program, which has reached thousands of students and their families has inspired Community Friends to partner with other educators to develop an international model.
Community Friends truly is a community of friends. Almost all the services we need to operate a nonprofit organization are donated through wonderful volunteers from legal and accounting to website design, office space, equipment, and all the volunteers on the ground who manage our programs. Your donations and your carbon offset purchases allow us to offer our programs.
Get Started Today.
Buy Carbon Offsets
A carbon offset is a financial instrument representing a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
Carbon offsets are easy to calculate and purchase for your family, friends and workplace. Help fund our economic development reforestation projects, our Carbon Game, and get a tax deduction.
Community Friends’ carbon offset programs promote sustainable land stewardship, including both carbon sequestration through reforestation and promotion of lifestyle shifts away from fossil fuels toward renewable energy sources such as eco-friendly micro-hydro power generation.
Some people buy twice the amount or even ten times the amount of offsets. There are other tailpipe emissions besides carbon and there are many support services to get a plane in the air. Buying offsets for friends and relatives is an educational gift idea to help people learn how easy it is to offset emissions.
Picture GallEry
People tell the story of Community Friends
