Last week was a blur. I spent days at home in Zoom meetings and I spent days at COHatch in meetings. I spent hours at Columbus Foundation attending a lesson and I’ve spent hours in our tree nursery tending to our trees.

One of our meetings was with two police officers. They taught us about an act called Community Emerging that each police officer partakes in. They have to pick a community and find some way that they can add value to that community. These two officers chose Fairlane mobile park. Behind the mobile homes is a homeless camp that holds anywhere between a100-200 people. The officers at first were trying to help the homeless camp when they realized the people in the mobile homes were neglected because everyone focuses on the problem behind them. Their goal is to create more separation between the homes and the people in the camp, reduce foot traffic, and keep the mobile park clean. They asked us to help. The idea is to have more trees to separate the two or help start a community garden for the mobile park. The officers are putting together an event on August 12 called Focus On Fairlane as a start of their project and to meet some of their short term goals.

A meeting I was in the day before was with a lady who puts together pop-up thrift stores or clothing exchanging events to reduce waste. We are trying to put together a Green Drinks event with her. Both of these meetings were very informative and very different from each other, yet they each wanted Green Columbus’s help. Green Columbus is more than just trees, it’s more than just plants. Green Columbus is a community builder, it brings people together. It improves the tree canopy and gives people free trees as a bonus. Each week I realize more and more how lucky I am to be a part of this organization. Not everything is what it appears to be at first glance.