Our story
It all started with Giel Boes, the founder of the Boes Bos Foundation. ' A hyperactive ICT nerd with a passion for nature ', as he describes himself. At a young age he was already very concerned about climate change and the loss of forests and biodiversity. He no longer wanted to stand by helplessly and decided to plant one million trees.
An insane amount of trees for one person. But it didn't stop with dreams. In 2015, Giel planted 500 trees by making donations and by rolling up his sleeves himself. That tasted like more and he decided to double the number of trees every year. And he succeeded! A thousand trees in 2016, 2,000 in 2017, 4,000 in 2018, 8,000 in 2019 and 16,000 trees in 2020!
So mission accomplished. But something else happened. Giel's actions to combat climate change inspired others to help. More and more people asked him how and where they could donate money 'to also contribute a tree'. This varied from 10 euros to 5,000 euros per person! Both ordinary people concerned about climate change and companies got involved. To whom to donate, they continued to find a difficult point.
Coach Frank Bruining challenged Giel to set up a foundation himself to take the search work off people's hands. Together with Dirk-Jan van Soelen and Lisa Korsten, he founded the Boes Bos Foundation at the end of 2020. Today Boes Bos is an ANBI certified foundation with 14 volunteers who dedicate themselves selflessly to the four pillars of Boes Bos:
- Planting trees in food forests in the Netherlands and forests around the equator
- Strengthen biodiversity
- Protecting trees (rainforests)
- Creating awareness about climate change