Welcome to buildOn Forest

At home or abroad, buildOn’s mission is to break the cycle of poverty, illiteracy, and low expectations through service and education. Across the U.S., buildOn empowers urban youth to transform their neighborhoods through service learning and to change the world by building schools in some of the economically poorest countries in the world.

Since 1991, buildOn has empowered more than 2.3 million hours of volunteer service in the U.S. and constructed more than 1,800 schools worldwide, with nearly 250,000 children and adults attending these schools every day. buildOn has a 4-star rating from Charity Navigator.

buildOn is not new to environmentally friendly and socially responsible activities. In each of the U.S. cities where we work, we have strong partnerships with local community gardens, city parks, and sustainably sourced food pantries. We’ve engaged hundreds of high school students, corporate partners, and individuals in park clean-ups, flower seed bomb planting, garden maintenance, and more!

We are committed to taking environmental action and are now pushing members of our ONE buildOn community to up the ante by becoming involved in environmental justice initiatives.

Every community we work in is directly impacted by environmental injustice. Through our “Environmental Justice Is Social Justice” ONE buildOn project, we are aiming to explore why marginalized communities bear a disproportionate share of negative environmental consequences.

And, to take our engagement in environmental justice a step further, we are planting with ForestNATION to allow our students and participants to take action by promoting afforestation and biodiversity in underserved communities around the world!