Jubitz Family Foundation awards $5,000 to Youth TreeCorps

The Jubitz Family Foundation has awarded Friends of Trees $5,000 for its Youth TreeCorps, which provides work for disadvantaged youth by guiding them in riparian area restoration projects.

The Youth TreeCorps offers low-income, at-risk youth first-time job experience and career education in the environmental field. Teens who serve on the Youth TreeCorps enhance Friends of Trees’ newly-restored riparian areas by weeding, mulching, and watering native seedling trees and plants.

Some of the groups Friends of Trees has partnered with to engage disadvantaged youth include Outside In, Multnomah County Department of Community Justice, and Portland Opportunities Industrialization Center.

The Youth TreeCorps is a part of Friends of Trees’ Green Space Initiative, which brings volunteers in the Portland-Vancouver metro area together to restore natural areas and plant trees along public right-of-ways. During the recent 2010-11 planting season, the Green Space Initiative led volunteers in planting more than 24,000 native trees and plants.

The Jubitz Family Foundation focuses on at-risk children, environmental stewardship of rivers and their watershed ecosystems, and peacemaking activities. For more information, visit www.Jubitzff.org.

To learn more about Friends of Trees, visit www.FriendsofTrees.org.

–TR