Vote for an Empowered Future

April 14, 2013

From our beginnings, TreePeople has been about a different paradigm. Instead of bemoaning the state of the environment, we inspire, engage, and support people to take personal responsibility to heal the ecosystem. So it’s encouraging  to see that 267 projects have come forward with ideas to fix LA in response to what is perhaps the city’s largest crowd-sourced philanthropic endeavor ever:  the Goldhirsh Foundation’s My LA2050 Challenge

Recognizing that LA has real challenges, and real potential to meet these, My LA2050 will award ten winning projects with $100,000 each. The winners will be those projects that garner the most votes for their idea for the healthy, successful LA of the future – with the Goldhirsh Foundation choosing one project from the top ten vote getters in each “indicator.”

As TreePeople works to deliver our vision of transforming Los Angeles into a living, resilient, viable and really fun city by 2023, we know that achieving this requires partnership,  innovation, and idea cross-pollination.  So despite our own fund-raising needs, we consciously stepped back to make space for new ideas to surface around the issues we are most involved with.  And many have.

Three entrants have reached out to partner with TreePeople:  Climate Resolve, The Council for Watershed Health, and Mia Lehrer + Associates. These are all strong candidates we know well and have worked with for many years. They all offer exciting, practical, and needed solutions to create a sustainable city.

Climate Resolve is tackling climate change with its “Inspiring LA to Prosper in a Changing Climate” project and plans to share funding with TreePeople. The Council for Watershed Health is hoping to get a read on “The Pulse of Los Angeles: Assessing the Watersheds.” And Mia Lehrer hopes to pilot an innovative “Urban Forest.”

Please, check out their ideas, and give them your vote by noon this coming Wednesday, April 17th. This is how we are going to build a healthy future –  inspiring and empowering Angelinos to dream and collaborate to see our shared visions come true.

By Andy Lipkis

Andy Lipkis is a practical visionary who has dedicated his life to healing the environment while improving the lives of individuals and communities. He founded TreePeople in Los Angeles in 1973 at age 18 and continues to serve as its President. Andy has spearheaded an approach using trees and forest-inspired technologies to make cities sustainable while mitigating floods, drought, pollution, and climate change. Called “Functioning Community Forests,” it is being demonstrated in L.A. as a model for cities everywhere.