Guest post by Veronica Khoury, CallRail Sales Development Representative
Earlier this month, Team CallRail had the chance to invest in our community by volunteering with local nonprofit, Trees Atlanta! Founded in 1985, Trees Atlanta’s mission is to protect Atlanta’s urban forest while educating the public on the importance of environmental preservation. The organization strives to improve Atlanta’s tree canopy by planting trees native to Georgia throughout the city, and by continuing to nurture and ensure the wellbeing of their trees for years after planting.
With only a limited number of spaces available to join the Trees Atlanta volunteer day, an eager group from CallRail quickly formed. We signed up to take part in the NeighborWoods initiative, which collaborates with various neighborhoods throughout Atlanta. Given instructions to arrive in the city’s southwestern Pittsburgh neighborhood by 8:45 am, our team filed in early in the morning, ready to get digging. Sporting stylish neon yellow vests and work gloves, we joined a group of volunteers who were already hard at work shoveling mulch into large planters. We picked up our shovels and jumped in, quickly working our way through the pile of mulch.
Once we’d completed this task, Alex, a member of the trees Atlanta staff, began his presentation on the process of how to plant our trees. I was confident in my capabilities, and several members of our team who were there had previously participated in another CallRail excursion planting trees with Habitat for Humanity. After Alex’s demonstration, we were excited to get started.
As you might expect, the work wasn’t easy. While two people dug a large, bowl-shaped hole for the tree, another person got to work detangling the roots so that the tree would have an optimal chance at survival. Once the tree was planted, we filled the dirt around the tree in a donut shape to assist in soaking up water. And once the donut shape was created we covered the area with the mulch we had shoveled earlier in the day, watered the tree, and moved on to the next one. By the end of the morning, our team planted approximately fifteen trees, just under 14 percent of the total trees planted that day.
Working with Trees Atlanta was a fantastic experience, and I would highly recommend partnering with them for anyone who is looking to participate in more community outreach and become more involved in our local neighborhoods. We’re excited to plant with them again soon!
