Members of Wildlands Trust are well aware of our commitment to the city of Brockton, where we have worked for over a decade. During these years, Wildlands has dedicated staff and funding to protect and restore 250 acres of much needed open space. But that is just the beginning. We have coached over 125 Brockton High School students through the Massachusetts Envirothon competition, introducing kids to environmental issues and potential career opportunities before they head off to college. We manage community outreach for the city’s urban tree planting program (Greening the Gateway Cities), aimed at lowering energy costs by creating tree canopy to reduce temperatures and provide direct shading. Through our Green Team program, we provide Brockton youth with paid service-learning positions on natural resource projects where they work alongside our staff. We convene and advise neighborhood park groups, church groups and community garden promoters who want to take more initiative to further environmental progress in the city. Currently, we are working on the restoration of the iconic Flagg Pond on the Brockton High School grounds, a project that will engage high school students and their teachers as our partners.
Serving this environmental justice community is some of our most meaningful work at Wildlands and we have plans to do much more. As a society, we all need to be reaching higher to help communities like Brockton, and the land trusts spread across the United States are not released from this imperative. Land trusts like Wildlands need to look beyond our habit of tallying up acres and reporting on our completed deals because these measurements fall short in a changing America. Both are the measures of a bygone era and although we will probably always apply them to gauge our success on some level, our communities are desperate for more than simply an acre count.
Essentially, land trusts are civic organizations and as such, are well-positioned to build authentic and effective partnerships that reflect the diversity and demographics of those communities that need us most, like Brockton. For the past several years, Wildlands has been part of a cohort brought together by the Island Foundation to work with environmental justice expert, Angela Parks, to learn how to embed diversity, equity and inclusion principles into our guiding documents and programmatic work. Wildlands still has a long way to go, but our clear commitment is a starting point.
Thank you to all of our supporters for making this work possible.
Karen Grey
President
Wildlands Trust Commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Wildlands Trust is committed to protecting land and providing access to nature for the people of our region, regardless of income, race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or gender identity. We will approach our work with complete respect for the cultures and perspectives of the communities we serve as we endeavor to connect and inspire all people to care about nature and the future of our planet.