YPARD marked a significant milestone in its climate action efforts by hosting YPARD Restoration Day 2025 under the theme “2025 Trees for 2025 Years” on 1 November 2025 in Balitta–Kiwenda, Wakiso District, Uganda. The event mobilized youth, communities, and partners for a large-scale tree-planting campaign aimed at restoring degraded communal land, supporting biodiversity, revitalizing soil health, and strengthening landscapes for sustainable agroecology. Each sampling symbolized hope, renewal, and long-term resilience, an active demonstration of young people’s commitment to regenerative agriculture and ecological restoration. Participants were encouraged to plant trees both physically at the site and remotely from anywhere across the world, sharing their actions online under the hashtag #YPARDRestorationDay2025, which amplified the campaign’s visibility and global reach. As a global network connecting young agricultural professionals, farmers, and environmental stewards across multiple countries, YPARD continues to champion agroecological transformation rooted in climate resilience and community leadership. Through this restoration initiative, the organization reinforced the importance of youth-led action in ecosystem regeneration and sustainable land management. The event also strengthened intergenerational collaboration by bringing together youthful enthusiasm and community-based land stewardship to foster shared responsibility over natural resources. By enabling both local and global participation, YPARD highlighted that agroecology extends beyond crop production to encompass the protection of forests, soils, and entire ecosystems. This event served as a powerful reminder that restoring the environment is foundational to building sustainable agrifood systems and resilient communities.
YPARD successfully mobilized young people and community members who dedicated their time and resources to restoring the environment both on-site in Balitta and remotely across the globe. This collective effort resulted in visible ecological action through the planting of thousands of trees. The large-scale initiative marked a significant step towards rehabilitating degraded communal land in Balitta–Kiwenda, laying a foundation for richer biodiversity, healthier soils, and future agroecological or agroforestry initiatives. The “name-a-tree” incentive fostered a sense of legacy and personal ownership, encouraging participants to remain connected to the trees they sponsored. By restoring endangered tree species and strengthening youth networks, the event reinforced YPARD’s identity not just as a platform for young agripreneurs and farmers, but as a movement of environmental stewards committed to youth-led agroecology, landscape restoration, and long-term sustainability. In many parts of Africa, deforestation, land degradation, soil erosion, and biodiversity loss have continued to threaten smallholder farming, food security, and environmental well-being. Through the restoration efforts, YPARD demonstrated how youth networks can drive ecological recovery, showing that young people are not merely the future, they were already key actors in the fight against climate change and ecological decline. For youth who are often marginalized in rural decision-making, the Restoration Day provided a visible and meaningful opportunity to engage. It built a sense of shared stewardship, intergenerational responsibility, and community involvement.
YPARD’s Restoration Day is more than a single event, it reflects a growing movement of youth-led agroecology and environmental stewardship. Building on the momentum of the 2025 campaign, YPARD is committed to expanding restoration initiatives in Uganda and beyond, transforming “trees for years” into a continental and eventually global movement. Going forward, YPARD will deepen youth and community participation by forming long-term stewardship groups, engaging remote youth through digital activism, and promoting continued monitoring of planted trees to strengthen accountability and connection. Future plans include strengthening collaborations with Local Governments, NGOs, climate-finance actors, and international partners to ensure sustainable seedling supply, technical support, land-use planning, and long-term care of restored areas. Restored landscapes and youth-led successes will also serve as evidence to influence national policies on agroecology, sustainable land management, and climate resilience. Additionally, tree-planting events will continue to be used as hands-on learning spaces for young agroecologists offering practical knowledge on ecosystem restoration, soil health, tree management, and agroecological principles which will be integrated into YPARD’s broader training, mentorship, and capacity-building programs.
The 2025 Restoration Day ultimately stood as a powerful declaration that youth can and will lead the future of ecological regeneration, agroecology, and sustainable land stewardship. Through reforestation, community engagement, youth mobilization, and symbolic acts, the event planted seeds of trust, ownership, hope, and long-term environmental renewal. As YPARD builds on this momentum, this single day of action is poised to expand into a far-reaching youth-led restoration movement that unites agroecology, climate resilience, community ownership, and intergenerational solidarity.
