By Milda Urbonaite, Summersalt Yoga founder

As some of you may know, giving back is one of the goals for our work. We have had an amazing year in 2018 and felt like even the smallest contributions mean so much for us and those who receive them.

As our main giving back focus for 2019, we have chosen the environmental issues that are so important to all us humans as the climate change and pollution are getting incredibly dangerous.

It is easy to get discouraged when things seem to be so bad, but the way we see it – there are ways positively contribute that can be accessible to each one of us.

So, this year we have chosen 4 projects to support (with your help!) through the B1G1 organization we’re part of. Two of them are directly related to the environmental issues and the other two are connected by extension:

When you join one of our retreats, we plant 3 trees to nurture the environment in Borneo and save the Orangutans

This helps to rebuild the native forest habitat at Tanjung Puting National Park (Central Borneo) to assist in the restoration of endangered wildlife such as the Orangutan by planting one tree. Orangutans can live in safety from being killed as pests by farmers, palm oil plantation staff and illegal loggers. This reforestation project will support an increasing population of Orangutans, enabling them to travel in safety and have access to food.

When you join our online yoga retreat, we plant one tree to restore the environment in Kenya

The project area has experienced environmental degradation as people cut trees for charcoal and firewood, harvest sand to sell leaving big sand mines and necked hills and villages with no trees. This all happens due to extreme poverty. The Mango Tree has focused in reversing this by encouraging the planting of new forest trees, in addition to income-generating fruit trees. This has significantly changed the situation and we do this continuously.

When you subscribe to our newsletter we give 4 days of access to lighting to families in India

This helps to bring light to a poor and rural household by giving them access to an affordable and eco-friendly solar lantern for a month. Solar lighting brings about many benefits: it allows families to extend their workday into the evening hours, it allows businesses to operate for longer hours and increase the economic activity levels in many villages, improves literacy rate as children can read after the dark more easily, as well as eliminates fire hazards such as a kerosene lamp

When you buy an item from our store, we give 10 days of access to life-saving clean water to people in Malawi.

This helps provide access to clean water for life by sponsoring a simple well and water pump. In the villages of Malawi, high infant and child mortality are caused by water and sanitation related diseases. These problems are made even worse by a lack of knowledge about proper hygiene. Your contribution of a well and water pump is all that is needed to let people live the fullest of lives.

Read our giving back page 

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