Up With Trees Receives National NeighborWoods Grant for Tree Program
BEAUTIFYING TULSA: The non-profit organization Up With Trees plants trees throughout the Tulsa area and raises awareness about the benefit of trees. The organization recently received the National NeighborWoods Grant.
Courtesy of Up With Trees
(TULSA) ? Tulsa non-profit Up With Trees has received a $7,686 grant from the Alliance for Community Trees () and The Home Depot Foundation. This challenge grant is part of the National NeighborWoods Program, made possible with support of The Home Depot Foundation.
NeighborWoods is a nationwide initiative that engages the public in meaningful hands-on action to produce tangible improvements to community health through tree planting and stewardship. Up With Trees is one of 11 organizations nationwide that will receive a NeighborWoods award in support of partnerships between urban forestry non-profits and affordable housing providers.
Up With Trees is a 32-year-old Tulsa-based nonprofit that beautifies the greater Tulsa area by planting trees and creates urban forestry awareness through education. For this grant project, Up With Trees will partner with Tulsa?s Community Action Project (), which provides safe, affordable, quality housing options for low-income families by buying, renovating and reselling homes in at-risk neighbor hoods. Up With Trees will plant trees at 40 homes owned by participants of CAP?s First-time Home buyer Program. Tree recipients will live in neighborhoods with Early Childhood Centers, where 80 percent of enrolled children live at or below the federal poverty line. All 40 homeowners will at tend tree planting and tree care seminars offered during the summer months, and will participate in tree plant ings from October through December along with volunteers from The Home Depot and Up With Trees. The new trees will help combat Tulsa?s lack of safe, affordable housing by improving neighborhood aesthetics, increasing homeowners? property values and reducing their energy usage by providing shade on the South face of the residences.
?It?s great to see this kind of support of Tulsa programs from national organizations,? said Up With Trees Executive Director Anna America. ?One of the messages we are trying to get across to people is that trees aren?t just something you throw in to make a city more beautiful, they really improve the quality of life and make a community safer, healthier and more livable. It?s important to make sure that all Tulsans have access to the many benefits of trees, and we hope this is the first of many collaborations with groups like that will help make that a reality in every neighborhood.?
Alliance for Community Trees () is dedicated to improving the health and livability of cities by planting and caring for trees. With 160 grassroots affiliates in 40 states and Canada, engages volunteers to take action to improve the environment where 80% of people live ? in urban areas. member organizations have planted and cared for 14.9 million trees in cities with help from 4.3 million volunteers. For more information, visit Alliance for Community Trees.
The Home Depot Foundation was created in 2002 to further the community building goals of The Home Depot. The Home Depot Foundation is dedicated to building affordable homes for working fami lies that are healthy to live in and affordable to own. To make homes healthy and affordable, the Foun dation encourages developers to incorporate responsible design and use durable and quality materials to ensure that homes are more energy and water efficient, have good indoor air quality, and provide a safe and healthy space to live. Since its formation, The Home Depot Foundation has granted $120 mil lion to nonprofit organizations and supported the development of more than 65,000 affordable, healthy homes. For more information, visit The Home Depot Foundation.
Updated 06-04-2009
READER COMMENTS
