Restorify's story
Restorify's mission is simple; we want to help restore our planet's lost forests. Restorify is an online tree planting platform, used to effectively crowdfund community tree planting across Northern Ireland. Currently, these efforts are focused on Belfast City Council's One Million Trees Programme.
The platform allows citizens to digitally map their stories to the trees they donate, accelerating local climate action by making it more human-centred. We offer a nature-based solution delivering multiple co-benefits, using technology to accelerate and scale local action to the level required to meet the global climate crisis.
A 'Mission Creator' creates a reforestation 'mission' on the platform including information on the tree planting target and species. Then, 'Tree Donors' (often individuals and/or organisations) browse available local missions and donate trees. Finally, 'Tree Planters' plant the trees. The tree mapping aspect to Restorify allows transparency for tree donors plus the "Your Tree, Your Story" function allows users to post photos, stories and links to all their donated trees, including which organisation sponsored the planting.
Restorify has multiple high-level outcomes: allows local authorities to translate public goodwill into climate action; accelerated creation of native woodland; access to previously under-utilised sources of funding for climate action; engagement and empowerment of communities and other stakeholders. The Restorify platform is an innovative model for crowdsourcing community reforestation efforts to create local ownership, momentum, and transformational climate action.
James McConville is the co-founder of Restorify. He is a registered architect and co-founded the social enterprise Restorify Community Interest Company in 2019 as a platform to help accelerate community reforestation across Ireland. To date, Restorify has planted almost 2,000 native trees across 10 sites.
More recently, Restorify will be supporting Belfast City Council's One Million Trees campaign in the city.
Useful learnings from Restorify
My advice is to do your research on your topic beforehand thoroughly. Understand your ideas, values, and your target user groups.
Restorify Community Interest Company uses the 'LEAN' methodology of Build-Measure-Learn in delivering our platform.
Don't be afraid of failure. You can learn a lot from failure and potentially make your idea better and stronger next time.
Our model proposes climate action is more successful with the inclusion of local stakeholders.
Restorify's metrics
Number of trees planted across the sites.
