On February 10th from 9am to 1pm the West Salem Community assembled in Ellen Park to plant trees for our Sparrow, Cesar. This marks one of the first times that our school has come together to help Cesar, with both students and staff from our school as well as other members of our community at this event, planting trees. Cesar has a disease called muscular dystrophy, which causes loss and weakness of muscle mass, and once our school has 200 service hours, we will unlock a donation towards his expensive treatment. 

Of course, there are other reasons people were at the event, even if it was mostly for Cesar. Sophomore Grace Forbes stated, “I love trees and I’m glad to see that this place is finally doing better and I’d love to support our Sparrow,” she also wants to get 25 community service hours in her pocket by the end of the year. While getting service hours, helping our Sparrow, and making the park nicer are amazing reasons to help out, a few more were offered by our schools AP Environmental science teacher Mrs. Kerr, “I enjoy helping the environment and I feel like friends of trees have a good cause and bring people in the community together.”

With so many reasons to help out, it’s no surprise that something like 50-60 people were gathered there to collaborate and plant over 30 trees. This is not the last we will see of Friends of Trees this year, as they plan to have another event in March and more throughout the springtime before they die down drastically in the summer. For the time they’re active, Friends of Trees is a fantastic service opportunity and is a great way to help our Sparrow, the environment, our community, and our transcripts. 

But Friends of Trees is not the only organization that can provide service hours towards our Sparrow. Opportunities like Red Cross blood drives and Meals on Wheels give us amazing ways to support both Cesar’s family, and our community. With so many chances to serve, and so many people doing hard work to help, we will likely reach our goal very soon.