It all started in 1987, when some school children in the Fagervik primary school came out with the idea to BUY the rainforest in order to save it. Their first goal was to enlarge a reserve in Monteverde, Costa Rica, in order to secure the survival of jaguars, pumas and tapirs but maybe primarily the seriously threatened quetzal - the sacred bird of the Inca people. Within two years, the area of the reserve was doubled, into 10000 hectare. Since then, our work has proceeded, with several projects in Costa Rica, Guatemala, Belize, Ecuador and Thailand.

The Children's Rainforest is an open, non-profit association that only cooperates with organizations that have been closely tied to local people and accepted by the country's government. The local organization must have a program for rainforest purchases and it must work with environmental education, regional development and reforestation. All purchases of rainforest from private owners must proceed through voluntary agreements and in full understanding. The people living inside the forest are of course allowed to stay! The money earned by selling their forested land is used to buy better land for cultivation or starting businesses. The area is then registered as a Reserve or National Park, and the local organization becomes the legal owner.

But our work for the Green Belt around our Earth is also performed at home. We participate actively in the process to influence people's opinion in these issues and to make politicians respond. One part of this work is to collect names on appeals. To make people stop buying things made from tropical timber (without FSC labels) is an important goal.

Our regulations prescribe that a maximum of one percent (1%) of our funding may be used on working expenses. The Children's Rainforests administration costs are paid by contributions from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA), membership fees, sponsors and bank interests. Since we finance reforestation, development work and research with contributions from SIDA, an authorized auditor revises our work.

The Children's Rainforest has founded an international network, International Children's Rainforest Network (ICRN), with membership organizations in England (http://tropical-forests.com), Japan (http://www.tim.hi-ho.ne.jp/kfukunaga), Germany (e-mail: hub@kinderregenwald.de), Canada and the USA (http://www.lascruces.com/~saverfn/). Its purpose is to support adopted projects, in order to achieve a high efficiency and stability. We all have the same guiding principles.

In 1991, the Children's Rainforest received The Grassroots Nobel Prize for environmental struggle: the Goldman Environmental Prize. The Prize is handed out annually, one for each continent, to environmentalists acting on grass root level. It was established in 1990.