The official name of the Foundation is Siemenpuu – Foundation for Social Movements’ Cooperation sr (in Finnish: Siemenpuu – kansalaisliikkeiden yhteistyösäätiö sr). In short Siemenpuu Foundation, Siemenpuu meaning ‘Mother tree’. As stated in the organisation’s charter, the objective of the Siemenpuu Foundation is to:
- Promote environmental protection and defend human rights;
- Advance people’s possibilities for political participation and make political decision making more democratic and transparent in the whole world;
- Advocate intercontinental cooperation between civil movements, in particular environmental and alter-globalist ones;
- Deepen the public understanding of the possibilities and limits of civic participation, of building civil society in different parts of the world, and of the impact of institutional funding to the inner dynamics of civil movements;
- Provide support in particular to civil movements, NGOs and research centres which operate in the Third World and which promote environmental protection, human rights, social justice, the preservation of biological and cultural diversity and/or the democratisation of society, or which help communities in surviving and resisting the negative impacts of globalisation.