volunteers

Tree Tenders Volunteer Training courses kicked off last month, and our first ever course in Richmond Hill is starting this weekend! I’m coordinating these courses for the first time this year, and I’m excited to be involved. If you don’t yet know about Tree Tenders, it’s a multi-day course that teaches you all about trees - tree planting, tree care, and even legal issues around trees in the city. You get basic arboriculture training through indoor and outdoor lectures and hands-on activities led by experts. You even get to plant a tree!

What a kick-off to National Volunteer Week and Earth Day! Our annual Toronto Hydro Planting event saw 300 LEAF Volunteer Planting Team Leaders and Toronto Hydro participants come out to plant 300 trees and shrubs in Milliken Park. Councillor Lee helped to bring our work into context with the importance of replanting in the midst of the Emerald Ash Borer.

When I first started volunteering with LEAF well over a year ago, I was impressed with the warmth and friendliness expressed by the staff as well as my fellow volunteers. While Toronto has a reputation for being cold and unwelcoming, LEAF’s recent end-of-year Best Forest Friends (BFF) Social proved otherwise. On a mild December evening in the Annex, volunteers, staff, board members, and friends of LEAF - past and present - filed in to the Centre for Social Innovation on Bathurst St. for a celebration of the year of hard work, dedication and accomplishments.