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Please
join Groundwork Lawrence as we celebrate Arbor Day and the planting of
Lawrence's 60th new tree of 2009! |
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City
of Lawrence Arbor Day Celebration
Friday, April 24, 2009
10:00am
to 12:00pm
8 Hazel Place - Lawrence, MA (click for a map)
(located
off Water Street in the Tower Hill Neighborhood)
At
this event, we will gather with our project partners, funders, and supporters
in front of the home where our 60th tree of the year will be
planted. Our tree planting crew from YouthBuild Lawrence will be on-hand
to help us put our final new tree in the ground.
Joining
us are U.S. Congresswoman Niki Tsongas, DCR Commissioner Richard K. Sullivan
Jr., Mayor Michael J. Sullivan, Senator Sue Tucker, Rep. William Lantigua, Rep.
David Torrisi, and Rep. Barry Finegold; our program partners, including
Bread and Roses Housing, the City of Lawrence First-Time Homebuyers Program,
Habitat for Humanity, Lawrence CommunityWorks, and YouthBuild; and our funders,
including the Department of Conservation and Recreation, the Home Depot
Foundation, the Patriots Foundation, and the US Forest Service.
Please see our press release below for more details.
Hope to see
you on Friday!
Kate
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Groundwork Lawrence, Residents and
Local Partners Celebrate Arbor Day and the Planting of 60 Trees
LAWRENCE, MA (April 22, 2009) - On Friday, April 24th
Groundwork Lawrence-- along with local non-profit
partners YouthBuild Lawrence, Habitat for Humanity, Lawrence CommunityWorks,
Bread and Roses Housing, and the City of Lawrence First Time Homebuyer
Program-- will celebrate Arbor Day with a tree planting at 8 Hazel Place in
Lawrence from 10 am until 12 noon. This
event will commemorate the culmination of Groundwork Lawrence's springtime
"GreenStreets" tree planting program, and the kick-off to its Urban Forestry
Coalition work-designed to engage local stakeholders in planning and advocating
for wider tree planting, maintenance, and protection across the city.
Through its GreenStreets program, Groundwork Lawrence has been working
to locate participants across Lawrence in partnership with organizations that
counsel and help aspiring new home owners make their first home purchase. With YouthBuild-- a local non-profit program
designed to help young adults attain their GEDs while learning on-the-job
carpentry and outdoor landscaping skills-- Groundwork Lawrence has been planting
sixty trees in the front and side yards of new homeowners within 20 feet of a
public way. The GreenStreets program is
especially important because unlike trees located on public streets or in
parks, each GreenStreets tree is matched with a new homeowner who agrees to
care for his/her tree over the long-term.
Program participants gain valuable tips and tools for maintaining and
watering the new tree to create a lasting commitment to tree stewardship. Combined, a tree steward's regular watering,
maintenance and oversight of an urban tree provide the tree with the greatest
chances for long-term survival, which can be up to 30 years with the right
conditions.
The benefits of urban trees are plentiful-from improving the quality of
our air and off-setting CO2 emissions from cars, trucks and busses, to
providing shade in summer and insulation in the winter, to creating an overall
cooling effect in our highly paved-over city.
Especially at a time when municipal budgets for maintenance are
shrinking, and with homeowners more concerned with heating and cooling bills
than ever, Groundwork's GreenStreets program aims to make a lasting investment
in our community's overall capacity for being cleaner, greener, and healthier
with a lush and vibrant tree canopy.
Groundwork Lawrence has been able to provide these trees to the
community free of charge thanks to grant funds from the Commonwealth through
DCR's Urban Forestry grant program, the Home Depot Foundation, US Forest
Service, and New England Patriots Foundation.
Since 2001, Groundwork Lawrence is has been greening Lawrence and
changing places, changing lives through tree plantings, creating new and
refurbished parks, building community gardens and cleanups, and is now part of
a multi-city urban forestry coalition with the cities of Chelsea and
Boston. To date, Groundwork Lawrence has
helped members of the community plant over 350 trees across Lawrence, and plans
to implement strategies for more comprehensive street tree investments over the
coming decade to make Lawrence greener and healthier for everyone. To learn more, visit www.groundworklawrence.org or contact Rose Gonzalez, Program Manager,
at 978-974-0770.
About The Home Depot Foundation
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 homes for working families that
are healthy to live in and affordable to own.
To make homes healthy and affordable, the Foundation 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 $70 million to nonprofit organizations and supported the
development of more than 50,000 affordable, healthy homes. To learn more, visit www.homedepotfoundation.org.
About DCR's Urban Forestry
Grant Program
The Massachusetts DCR
Urban and Community Forestry Program assists communities and nonprofit groups
in protecting, growing, and managing community trees and forest ecosystems,
with the ultimate aim of improving the environment and enhancing livability of
all of Massachusetts' communities. DCR
provides grants, technical assistance, training, and recognition awards to
communities of all sizes throughout Massachusetts. The program also provides guidance on urban
forestry policy issues at the state level.
To learn more, visit www.mass.gov/dcr/stewardship/forestry/urban/.
About YouthBuild
YouthBuild Lawrence is a youth and community development program that
simultaneously addresses core issues facing low-income communities: housing, education, employment, crime
prevention, and leadership development.
In YouthBuild programs, low-income young people ages 16-24 work toward
their GEDs or high school diplomas, learn job skills and serve their
communities by building affordable housing, and transform their own lives and
roles in society. To learn more, contact
Yamira Cartagena, Program Manager, at 978.681.0548.
About Merrimack Valley Habitat
for Humanity
Merrimack Valley Habitat for Humanity is a non-profit homebuilder
founded in 1985 by concerned local citizens who came together as
volunteers. They are the local affiliate
of Habitat for Humanity International, the largest non-profit homebuilder in
the world with a network of over 2,100 affiliates. Habitat builds simple, affordable,
comfortable homes in partnership with people who need them. They believe that a stable community begins
with home ownership. By giving this
opportunity to economically disadvantaged people in our community, Habitat is
enabling them to take control of their lives.
Habitat's ultimate goal is to eliminate poverty housing and homelessness
in the world by providing homeownership opportunities to those in need. To learn more, visit www.merrimackvalleyhabitat.org.
About Lawrence CommunityWorks
(LCW)
Lawrence CommunityWorks is a nonprofit community development
corporation working to transform and revitalize the physical, economic, and
social landscape of Lawrence. LCW does
this with a growing network of residents and stakeholders who are: engaged in building family and community
assets, providing each other with caring and mutual support, building
leadership and civic engagement skills, and engaging in collective action for
positive growth and change in Lawrence.
LCW's Homeownership Center provides homebuyer education and counseling
in order to help members of the community become knowledgeable and stable
long-term homeowners by emphasizing financial literacy, mortgage readiness,
anti-predatory lending education, and consumer protection. To learn more, visit www.lcworks.org.
About Bread and Roses Housing
(BRH)
Bread & Roses Housing (BRH)
is a nonprofit charitable organization founded in 1988. Its community land
trust model is a progressive solution to community change in the area of
affordable housing. By placing
land in a trust to be used and shared as a community resource in the service of
perpetually affordable, owner-occupied housing, BRH is able to offer a
radically different model of home ownership to families most in need of
housing. With the current selling price for a newly constructed,
energy-efficient 3-bedroom home at $75,000, BRH offers very low income families
housing opportunities they can truly afford. When land is no
longer a commodity but a shared community resource, very low income families
who have been traditionally excluded from the housing market are able to
realize their goals of quality secure housing and are welcomed into a community
where values of empowerment, education and sustainability are primary. In addition to creating and preserving
affordable housing opportunities for very low income families, BRH provides the
education, training and support families need for continued success. One of the
long term effects of BRH's programs is the nurturing of strong and healthy urban
neighborhoods, peopled by residents who have an experiential knowledge of their
interdependence, and who are committed to working together to widen the circle
of neighborhood improvement and community well-being. To learn more, visit www.brhousing.org.
About the City of Lawrence's
First Time Homebuyer Program
The City of Lawrence through its Community Development
Department offers Lawrence homeowners various Housing Programs. All Programs are contingent upon funding
availability and housing priorities. Housing priorities are based on at-risk
situations and high-risk targeted neighborhoods. The First Time Homebuyer Assistance Program
is a federally funded HOME program that provides financial assistance to low
and moderate-income households in the purchase of their first home. Down payment assistance is available to
qualified Lawrence homebuyers in the form of a 0% deferred loan forgiven in
five years for 3% of the home's purchase price to assist with down payment and
closing costs. To learn more, visit www.cityoflawrence.com/Pages/LawrenceMA_PlanDev/housing.
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