Century Pacific Launches GForest Initiative With GCash

Century Pacific Food, Inc. (PSE:CNPF), one of the largest branded food companies in the Philippines, together with Philippines’ leading mobile wallet, GCash, and non-profit impact organization HOPE, has launched GForest, an initiative to jointly plant 1 million coconut trees in the provinces of South Cotabato and Sarangani within 24 months.

Photo Insert: Century Pacific, GCash and HOPE's GForest app aims to plant a million coconut trees in Mindanao.

GForest is an environmental protection feature on the GCash app that allows users to take an active role in helping mother nature through tree planting. GCash users can do so by collecting enough green energy to plant virtual trees.

For every virtual tree planted, CNPF, GCash, and HOPE then plant a real coconut tree, which users may select on the app. GForest users earn green energy points by using various cashless services of GCash.

This marks the first time that a GForest tree-planting initiative will be implemented in Mindanao, helping thousands of farmers in the region. With this tree-planting partnership, coconut farmers in Mindanao get the benefit of improved farming productivity and profitability.

It will also have a positive effect on female farmers, who comprise 40% of the farmers in the program.

The project will cover the areas of Banga, Surallah, Norala, Koronadal, General Santos City, Malungon, Glan, Alabel, Malapatan, Maasim, Kiamba, Maitum, Polomolok, Tampakan, and Tupi.

Noel Tempongko, Vice President and General Manager of CNPF’s coconut division, said, “We are thankful to our partners, GCash and HOPE, for giving us an opportunity to expand our sustainability program holistically - involving consumers and leveraging cashless technology. The program enables us to boost the livelihoods of the coconut farming community in Mindanao and at the same time improve coconut farming productivity and quality of supply, which are all beneficial to our growing coconut business. This also accelerates our journey towards carbon neutrality.”

With the plan to plant 1 million trees within 2 years, the GForest initiative accelerates CNPF’s initial pledge to provide coconut seedlings and pulls in new partners to augment the number of new coconut trees to be planted in Mindanao. In 2020,

CNPF signed a partnership with HOPE to provide coconut farmers 100,000 quality seedlings a year for the next five years. This new partnership will benefit more farmer communities and allow Century Pacific’s coconut operations to become carbon neutral sooner.

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