TreePeopleTorin is TreePeople’s Director of Engagement and Partnerships. He serves on the board of the Atwater Village Neighborhood Council. Originally from Sacramento, he enjoys exploring L.A.’s many neighborhoods and natural treasures, and roots for the Oakland A’s.
How did you first hear about TreePeople? Probably word of mouth. Maybe a friend invited you to plant trees with them at one of our volunteer events, or shared one of our blogs on Facebook. Word of mouth is a powerful tool. As a non-profit, it’s a tool we rely on to grow our organization…
TreePeople has always imagined our conference center here at Coldwater Canyon Park as a space that fosters important conversations around sustainability. Over the years, it has held a host of events including a State Assembly Committee hearing, collaborative discussions on infrastructure, to name a couple. Last Saturday’s event, the kick-off forum for the Neighborhood Council…
I’ve shared our park on hundreds of tours in my six-year tenure at TreePeople including curious residents, City Council staff, State Legislators and even the Mayor of a Mexican city. All these experiences have been rewarding. However, this past week, we had the unique pleasure of hosting 70 Fulbright Scholarship students. The group was having their annual…
Here at TreePeople we’re incredibly lucky to have the volunteers that we do, and we’re continuously amazed at how committed, enthusiastic, caring, and energetic our volunteer community is. We have many standout volunteers, and it’s always a privilege and a joy to honor them through our own Volunteer Appreciation events. But we’re especially proud that…
Keeping our city’s trees alive is something TreePeople is addressing on many fronts. One major project is with the City of Los Angeles Recreation and Parks Department, with whom we’ve been working closely for years. TreePeople and our volunteers regularly plant new trees and care for existing ones to improve our park tree canopy for generations…
We’re seeing so many repercussions from 2013’s record dry year, and now that Governor Brown has declared a state-wide drought, cities, counties and government agencies are making decisions about how to reduce water use. But we’ve known for a long time that we need to drastically reduce the amount of water imported into the Los…
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…
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…
There’s been quite a bit of outrage over the Toys‘R’Us “Meet the Trees” ad campaign. If you haven’t seen it, I’ll give you a brief synopsis: kids think they’re going on a boring tree-related field trip, but instead get to go to Toys‘R’Us to pick out a free toy. Cue great wonderment and enthusiasm from…
It’s lining up to be another dry winter, with water reserves at worryingly low levels. So what’s with L.A.’s obsession with expansive green lawns? How did this landscape ideal, imported from rainy Northern Europe, come to mean the good life in water-scarce Los Angeles? Can we keep it up, or is there a better way?…
It was at the very first Earth Day in April of 1970 that our founder and president, Andy Lipkis, gained inspiration to do his first tree planting project. More than 40 years later, April is also a time of year when lots of folks ask us what we’re up to, the answer is: A LOT….