Founding of Global Forest Generation
In the fall of 2017, George Fenwick, founder and former President of American Bird Conservancy (ABC), Rita Fenwick, former Vice President of Development at ABC, and Leslie Danoff, former Board Director at Rainforest Trust, began to envision a new nonprofit dedicated to protecting and restoring threatened, native forest ecosystems by empowering grassroots conservation leaders and their communities.
Constantino (Tino) Aucca, co-founder and President of Asociación Ecosistemas Andinos (ECOAN) had developed, over many years, a model of successful community reforestation that could be replicated on a large scale. That was exactly what GFG hoped to facilitate. Tino’s capacity for mobilizing people of all ages in remote communities and ensuring that they continued to benefit from their forest stewardship were well-known to the Fenwicks. At the helm of the American Bird Conservancy, they had supported for almost 20 years Tino’s leadership with Indigenous Quechua communities protecting forest habitat in South America’s high Andes.
Together, these four conservation veterans came together and started Global Forest Generation with the goal of taking what Tino had developed in the Andes, and replicating it across the entire Andean range. Within weeks of GFG’s founding, Acción Andina was launched in partnership with Tino and ECOAN as their first large-scale, community led restoration initiative across the Andes of South America. Soon after, Florent Kaiser, who had been present in the Andes when the dream of Acción Andina came together with Tino, came aboard to lead Global Forest Generation as Executive Director. Now the CEO of GFG, Florent’s leadership goes beyond the Andes and will take GFG globally.