Santa Monica High School students recently joined nine other southland middle and high schools to become champions for the environment via TreeByTree, a five-week social media campaign cosponsored by TreePeople and Edison International on Facebook.
TreeByTree allowed students from 17 schools to submit weekly photos of their school’s environmental activities.
Daily voting across the Facebook community decided the 10 winners, who garnered between 366 (John F. Kennedy Middle College High School) and 1,550 (Norwalk High School) votes apiece. In a series of sponsored field trips in March and April, each winning school will be able to bring 50 students to join in TreePeople’s multi-year effort to restore the firedamaged
Angeles National Forest ecosystem by planting native Jeffrey and Coulter pine seedlings. TreePeople and Edison International will organize all-expenses paid field trips for students from Norwalk High School, Franklin Classical Middle School, Hughes Middle School, Hawthorne Middle School, San Gabriel Christian School, Eleanor Roosevelt High School, Bell Gardens High School, Santa Monica High School, Jefferson Leadership Academies, and John F. Kennedy Middle College High School.
TreeByTree was launched to inspire and engage middle and high school students while simultaneously encouraging families in Southern California Edison’s (SCE) service territory to support the cause by switching to paperless billing.
Over the five weeks of the campaign, SCE secured nearly 1,500 customer commitments to give up paper statements.
“Last year, Edison International gave 19.2 million shareholder dollars to thousands of nonprofits in our service territory, including TreePeople,” said Tammy Tumbling, director of Philanthropy and Community Investment for Southern California Edison. “The Angeles National Forest remains in dire need of human intervention following the devastation of the 2009 Station Fire. Edison International is very pleased to work side-by-side with TreePeople and the winning schools to restore the Angeles.”
Edison International’s support of charitable causes is entirely funded by shareholders.
