Come grow with ACT! Join our vital coalition of organizations dedicated to the same cause - restoring community forests for the benefit of all people. ACT is the only national organization solely focused on the needs of nonprofit and community organizations engaged in urban forest protection. Our work is improving the environment where 86% of Americans live: our cities, towns, and villages. Together, ACT's national network of members have planted and cared for 7.8 million trees with help from 450,000 volunteers.
Membership Benefits
ACT is a membership association. Our independent, community-based members are planting, preserving, and maintaining the tree canopies of all major metro markets and many towns in between.
Influence: ACT serves as a collective voice in urban forestry.
Education: ACT provides formal training seminars and workshops.
Networking: ACT is the perfect venue for giving advice, making new contacts, and sharing ideas.
The physical framework of a community is called its infrastructure, and can be divided into two types: green and gray. Gray infrastructure refers to areas of buildings, roads, utilities, and parking lots; green infrastructure includes areas covered with trees, shrubs, and grass. A community can measure the size, shape, and location of its green infrastructure and accurately calculate the public utility functions these areas perform, although cities are only just starting to value green infrastructure for more than its beauty. For local public policymakers responsible for decisions affecting urbanization, the problem is not solely about getting the city or a developer to plant more trees, but rather one of balancing gray and green infrastructure.
College Park, MD (June 1, 2009)- The Alliance for Community Trees (ACT) is engaging in a comprehensive process to identify national and local successes in urban and community forestry. The idea is threefold. First, is to understand local successes and provide some measure of benchmarking for community organizers. Second, is to have a clear view of how local successes are being amplified as part of national trends and progress (to see the forest for the trees, if you will). Third, is to combine local success and national trends into a "Greenprint for the Future" of urban and community forestry, an agenda that can be pursued by both national and local organizations committed to city trees.
Note from ACT: Reader's Digest has the largest print circulation of all U.S. periodicals, so this positive media about the urban forest- and Citizen Foresters- is good news for our growing national movement. Hopefully ACT members will be able to use this in fundraising and volunteer efforts.
By David Hochman
Los Angeles, CA (June 1, 2009)- Growing trees in the concrete jungle brings neighbors benefits beyond beauty. Your street is definitely naked," Andy Lipkis was telling me as he squinted in the blazing sun at the concrete expanse outside our house in the Del Rey neighborhood of Los Angeles. "It's like someone said, 'Trees? Nah, don't need 'em here.'"
