TreePeople
Without water there are no trees, and without trees there is no water. So long as this record-breaking drought persists, Southern California’s quality and way of life remain threatened. TreePeople is on the front lines working with government agencies and utilities to produce a coordinated response to our water crisis so that we keep our…
Nearly thirty students in the Watts neighborhood of South Los Angeles rose at 7 AM last Saturday to spend the day at their high school Alliance Cindy and Bill Simon Technology Academy, or Simon Tech, as everyone seems to call it. If you know teenagers, this fact alone is remarkable. But it gets even better….
Valentine’s Day is just 7 days away and even though store shelves have been overflowing with candy hearts for weeks already, we’re willing to bet you still haven’t given much thought to your Feast of Saint Valentine shopping list. And while we’d never suggest you forgo that box of chocolate, why not do something a…
This past Saturday we hosted another of our Community Sustainability Workshops and got a standing-room-only crowd – maybe it’s the drought? Maybe it’s just that there are a lot of cool, in-the-know people? Or maybe it’s actually because we sell hope. (Okay, we don’t sell it. We give it away for free!) Yes, it’s the driest winter…
Part of our mission here at TreePeople is to be a source of practical information and solutions that can help keep every Angeleno safe and healthy, especially in times of extreme weather and natural forces such as the current drought emergency. Even in the face of projected hotter and more erratic weather patterns, we can still move…
Last week, Peter Weiss, one of our awesome Outreach Volunteers, and I represented TreePeople at the Pacoima Forward Community Fair at Hadden Elementary School. The event was lovely; lots of folks from the school community and the surrounding neighborhood attended. People were really enthusiastic about becoming TreePeople volunteers and signing up for our classes on…
We live in a beautiful Mediterranean climate. Southern California is actually one of only five regions in the world with this climate – cool, wet winters and warm to hot, dry summers. But of those five, ours is the driest. Fortunately, our native plants have evolved to thrive here; they expect to get their moisture for the…
Our greatest strength as an organization is our incredible volunteers. We are lucky to have so many people who love to help and want to do more. An exciting way that TreePeople is able to get more folks involved is through our corporate volunteering program. Our corporate volunteering program was introduced with the goal of…
This fact inspired me to write an article for The Jewish Journal in honor of Tu b’Shevat, the Jewish New Year or Birthday of the Trees. For decades, students at Jewish schools and schools throughout Los Angeles County have planted seedlings with TreePeople to celebrate this holiday. But these days, tree planting has become much…
“We have enough water to live on, but not enough to waste.” — Dorothy Green, founding president of Heal the Bay. Dorothy Green wrote these words in an article that was published in the Los Angeles Times in 2008, shortly before her death. She went on to outline a thoughtful set of recommendations to create a sustainable…
With the New Year comes lots of good intentions. Why not start with how you dispose of your holiday tree? If you’ve been thinking about trying to live a more sustainable lifestyle, you can look no further than your living room and that post-Christmas—or whatever holiday you celebrated—tree. Rather than haul it out for the…
After working at TreePeople for five years, and attending many Citizen Forester events, I finally led my own tree planting. I’ve always known that TreePeople’s Citizen Foresters are amazing people, but I’ve never understood precisely what these volunteers go through to lead plantings in their neighborhoods. In my personal life, I am a board member…