Planting Empowerment recently completed two-5 hectare projects: one in the community of Nuevo Paraiso and another in Arimae/Embera Puru. The communities and individual landowners will be remunerated through lease payments, a portion of the profits from future timber sales, and PE-funded community projects.

Nuevo Paraiso is a Latino community about an hour off the Pan-American highway. Its roughly 180 inhabitants have exhausted their natural resources through logging and slash-and-burn agriculture and are now seeking a more sustainable alternative. In January 2007 one landowner signed five hectare lease agreement with Planting Empowerment.

Arimae/Embera Puru is a co-mingled Embera and Wounaan Indigenous community located near the sleepy Darien capital of Santa Fe. It owns roughly 8,000 hectares of land, 2,000 of which is deforested. It is excited about gaining the most from its land and improving its quality of life of its members, and has also signed a 25 year lease with Planting Empowerment.