Video Credit: Ruder Finn, Inc. / American Forests
When the Elkhart River spilled over its banks in Goshen, Ind., in 2018, the rising brown water submerged roads and damaged homes — revealing how vulnerable communities can be when natural systems are stretched beyond their limits.
For city forester Aaron Sawatsky-Kingsley, the flood was a pivotal turning point.
“That was kind of a wake-up moment for different members within our community,” he recalls, explaining that the trauma of the flood went deeper than physical damage. “Relationship with place is critical to our social health… Without it, we become unanchored in time and in place.”
That sense of being “unanchored” led directly to the 2020 launch of Goshen’s Department of Environmental Resilience, with Sawatsky-Kingsley appointed as its director. A central part of increasing the community’s resilience to future devastation became clear: trees — and lots of them.
Trees act as quiet guardians, their roots binding soil and slowing water’s rush while their branches and leaves soften rain before it hits the ground. Enabling water to sink instead of surge, trees ensure floods are less sudden and cruel.
So, Goshen set an ambitious urban forestry goal: to achieve 45% tree canopy by 2045. Since setting the goal, Goshen has documented roughly 3% growth in overall tree canopy. While this number may seem modest, it represents a significant achievement in urban forestry, as the city has successfully reversed previous canopy loss and surpassed its former coverage. And with new resources and catalytic funding from American Forests, the city’s efforts to sustain this momentum are ramping up.
Goshen’s story is not an isolated one — it’s part of a larger national movement to create more equitable, sustainable communities, with trees at the center.
Photo Credit: Emily Allison / American Forests
Communities across the United States are facing overlapping economic, social and environmental pressures. It’s why so many cities have embraced Tree Equity — the belief that all communities deserve access to enough trees to support people’s health, safety and wellbeing.
While each community is shaped by different histories, climates and challenges, they are connected by one clear need: All people deserve to experience Tree Equity. And the most effective way to achieve it is from the ground up.
Photo Credit: Emily Allison / American Forests
Rooting nationwide resilience in local action
Many people think of trees as ornamental luxuries. But urban forests are part of a city’s lifesaving infrastructure: They cool neighborhoods, lower energy costs, manage stormwater, improve air quality and allow people to gather outdoors safely. Lack of tree cover leads to higher temperatures, worse air quality and greater health risks — effects that are disproportionately experienced. On average, lower-income communities have 26% less tree canopy coverage than wealthier areas, while communities of color tend to have 38% less.
American Forests estimates closing the Tree Equity gap in U.S. cities will require the planting and care of roughly 500 million trees — a scale of need that makes clear this is not a problem any single city or organization can solve on its own.
With this understanding, American Forests is accelerating Tree Equity in cities nationwide, inviting local leaders to reimagine their cities to be greener, more just places to live. To do so, the organization is partnering locally and equipping leaders in the most impacted communities with the funding, tools, resources and coalition support needed to build local capacity and expand equitable tree canopy where it will make the greatest difference.
To date, American Forests has inspired a groundswell of action in more than 1,000 cities and counting.
Photo Credit: Steve Swisher / American Forests
American Forests’ support through its Catalyst Initiative & Fund targets leaders directly from the frontlines — faith-based organizations, community groups, environmental justice organizations and small municipalities — and is designed to help them overcome barriers to action, build local capacity and unlock opportunities for systemic change.
“Change is best led by the community and for the community,” says Lida Aljabar, senior director of the Catalyst Initiative & Fund at American Forests. “We really see that proven in the cities we work in and in our value of service leadership by those on the front lines.”
While a nationwide movement, Tree Equity is rooted in community-level collaboration and powered by local action. From Goshen, Ind., to Atlanta and New Orleans to Phoenix, and the dozens of other cities with Catalyst Fund grantees, the impact of American Forests’ local partners and their inspiring stories are driving progress toward Tree Equity and turning tree canopy into lasting community resilience.
Faith as stewardship
On a 4-acre campus garden in Atlanta, Sister Terri Ali is growing more than vegetables. She’s growing relationships between children and trees, faith and stewardship, and a city and its living systems.
Sister Ali is the farmer and garden teacher at Mohammed Schools of Atlanta, an Islamic school system closely connected to the Atlanta Masjid of Al-Islam. The school established the garden in 2014, and what began as a single raised bed is now a USDA-certified farm with fruit trees and vegetables, woven into campus life through daily care. The farm immerses children in the rhythms and responsibilities of stewardship.
Photo Credit: Steve Swisher / American Forests
“Our children are our main focus,” Sister Ali says, “not only to affect transgenerational illnesses, but to put them in touch with their role in keeping the Earth healthy and to feed themselves.”
With the guidance of Sister Ali, students plant and tend crops and fruit trees. They learn when and how to water, and watch how food, shade and health connect through the living systems for which they’re caring.
“Our relationship with the Earth is very important,” Sister Ali says. “How we live with the Earth, what we take from the Earth and what we give back, it’s a balancing act.”
Sister Ali’s work is focused on her school community, but it’s also part of a broader network of faith-rooted stewardship across Georgia.
Georgia Interfaith Power and Light (GIPL), a statewide, faith-based environmental nonprofit, supports communities of faith in implementing practical climate solutions.
Photo Credit: Steve Swisher / American Forests
For Hannah Shultz, GIPL’s program director, the connection is strong because many congregations already share a moral obligation for stewardship. “Almost every major faith tradition has an ethic of caring for the natural environment and…an ethic of justice,” she says. “We can’t love each other well if we’re not caring for the environment around us because these two things are directly connected.”
Photo Credit: Steve Swisher / American Forests
This conviction is best seen through GIPL’s “ReWilding” program. Supported by American Forests, the initiative aims to plant more than 1,850 trees through diverse congregational partnerships. Through her work, Shultz has seen trees become a uniquely tangible entry point into the urban forestry space. By rooting climate action in faith, organizations across Atlanta are modeling how caring for the land is also caring for one another.
People powering resilience
Joel Holton grew up in New Orleans, in neighborhoods where trees once shaped daily life without anyone having to think about them. Shade was just there, and streets felt cooler.
Then, Hurricane Katrina hit. The catastrophic 2005 storm didn’t just flood homes and displace families, it stripped away a large portion of the city’s urban forest — much of which never returned, leaving people more exposed to storms and extreme heat. This is a reality that Holton is working to reverse.
“Tree Equity looks like bringing back what the city used to be like,” he says.
Photo Credit: Olivier Sarbil / American Forests
Holton now manages a workforce development program at Louisiana Green Corps (LAGC), a nonprofit organization that connects environmental restoration with economic opportunity. The program trains young adults and adults for jobs in construction, green infrastructure and conservation. The work is both physical and public, with crews planting trees and installing green infrastructure that requires constant maintenance to ensure survival. Connection to community is a centerpiece of LAGC’s programming and drives Holton’s sense of belonging to the work.
Photo Credit: Casey Joiner / American Forests
“I planted these [one] hundred trees right on the Lafitte Greenway,” he says of a recent planting along one of New Orleans’ frequently used bike trails. “It gives you that sense of pride — that sense of ownership in your own community — and I think there’s no better way to rebuild a community than from the inside out.”
That matters, because LAGC’s program is designed to reach people who are often excluded from environmental careers before they even know those careers exist.
“I always believe that innovation comes out in necessity,” Holton says. “The people that are in the trenches will be the ones that ultimately come up with the solutions to solve those problems. Traditionally, a lot of the individuals from Black and Indigenous communities here are left out of that upswing. So, systematically, they don’t think that these opportunities are real.”
Angel Harris is one of those participants. She didn’t come in calling herself an “urban forester” but quickly realized how important the field was through her contributions to the Lafitte Greenway project.
Photo Credit: Casey Joiner / American Forests
“Now [Lafitte Greenway] is starting to be diverse,” Harris says. “We have elders, middle-aged people, younger people and toddlers. We even have a space for dogs. I feel like everybody is actually making use of the land that we have here. We used to look at it and just go past it.”
For Holton, that shift is the point. Tree Equity in New Orleans is about both restoring community and the capacity for environmental resilience.
“The environmental infrastructure in this city is critical to its continued success and existence,” he says. “We don’t have the option to act like [storms and extreme heat] don’t exist, because we deal with them every day.”
Meeting these daily challenges requires resources that few local organizations can provide alone. Since receiving support from American Forests, LAGC has been able to bridge this gap, utilizing catalytic funding and technical expertise to advance workforce development and environmental resilience. This support has directly empowered projects like the Lafitte Greenway, where residents receive paid training while restoring the city’s historic canopy.
Ultimately, the support does more than plant trees; it helps residents realize they belong in the work of restoring their own city by providing jobs that pay, skills that last and the pride of contributing to something visible and enduring in the community.
Trees as public health
In South Phoenix, Masavi Perea spends his days knocking on doors, organizing neighborhood meetings and answering questions about heat. As a community organizer with Unlimited Potential, a local organization focused on supporting and enabling equitable solutions for the community, Perea is helping residents understand what extreme heat means for their daily lives and how trees can make a difference.
For Perea, the work is not just a job, it’s personal.
“The work that I do is very important for me because I live here — my kids live here, my grandkids are gonna live here,” he says. “I see people getting sick, and I feel that it is my responsibility to leave a better world than what I found.”
Photo Credit: Quinn Taplin, Drifthouse Media / American Forests
In Phoenix, summer temperatures regularly exceed 110 degrees Fahrenheit, making trees a form of protection for residents. Perea talks with families about heat illness, rising electricity bills and why some blocks feel unbearable, yet others stay cooler. He and other members of Unlimited Potential are building support for trees as a solution and serving as a bridge between communities and those ready to invest in the work.
Tawsha Trahan, Unlimited Potential’s director of healthy communities, has spent hours driving around different neighborhoods in Phoenix logging the amenities available in each, including access to green spaces. What she comes away with is an eye-opening picture of how infrastructure changes from one neighborhood to the next.
Photo Credit: Olivier Sarbil / American Forests
It exposes a lack of equity, and for Trahan, these comparisons are a way of grounding herself in the organization’s “one health” perspective — the idea that human health, environmental conditions and community well-being are inseparable.
“We think of the planet, we think of people, we think of plants and animals as all part of an ecosystem that makes a healthy person,” she says. “And trees — whether it’s your local park, your school or places that you gather — are very important.”
Photo Credit: Quinn Taplin, Drifthouse Media / American Forests
Photo Credit: Quinn Taplin, Drifthouse Media / American Forests
That perspective shapes everything from how Unlimited Potential designs its programs to how it trains staff. Tree planting is paired with bilingual health education, resource referrals and long-term follow-up, and it’s part of a broader strategy to reduce heat stress and improve quality of life. The bilingual nature of the program is essential to this strategy. By providing outreach in both English and Spanish, Unlimited Potential ensures that language isn’t a barrier to those who might otherwise be excluded from understanding heat threats and the lifesaving benefits of trees.
“Community health workers are the heart of our organization,” says Trahan, “[They] live and work in the neighborhoods that they’re serving. So they understand the issues [residents] have, speak the language and have the ability to be a trusted person in a neighborhood, which is critically important.”
With funding and technical support from American Forests, this network of community health workers has strengthened their technical knowledge and planning capacity, allowing them to bridge the gap between lived experience and climate data.
It’s this trusted, on-the-ground outreach of organizations like Unlimited Potential which helps ensure that the resources of city- and state-level initiatives reach communities who need it most. American Forests has been working with the Arizona Sustainability Alliance, the City of Phoenix and local organizations — including Unlimited Potential — to build a statewide coalition for Tree Equity. This collective momentum reached a historic milestone in 2021, when Phoenix became the first city in America to officially commit to achieving Tree Equity by 2030. This commitment translates into tangible action through policy change, such as the new Phoenix SHADE Plan, as well as the development of new resources and tools like American Forests’ local Maricopa County Tree Equity Score. It also supports infrastructure initiatives like shaded “Cool Corridors,” which prioritize improving heat-vulnerable neighborhoods block by block.
Together, through this coalition model, American Forests’ efforts align neighborhood and- city‑level action with statewide goals — ensuring an equitable, coordinated response to extreme heat as a defining public health challenge across Arizona.
The future, grown together
Back in Goshen, Sawatsky-Kingsley views trees as a decades-long commitment that only succeeds if a city supports its urban forest from seed selection to maturity. This full-cycle approach, carried out by Sawatsky-Kingsley and his team, reinforces that the real work of urban forestry happens long before — and well after — planting days.
Photo Credit: Emily Allison / American Forests
This work starts by ensuring a healthy seed supply. Sawatsky-Kingsley operates the city’s nurseries, allowing staff to grow trees locally and maintain control over species selection and supply — an increasingly important advantage as more communities compete for limited nursery stock.
But just as important is what happens after trees go in the ground. In Goshen, maintenance is integral to the plan as improper care and neglect can quickly erase years of progress.
Photo Credit: Olivier Sarbil / American Forests
Sawatsky-Kingsley also knows this system won’t hold unless more people understand it. That’s why youth education and workforce pathways sit alongside nurseries and maintenance planning as key priorities. With funding and technical support from American Forests, Goshen runs an arboricultural training program helping students gain hands-on exposure to urban forestry. Mayor Gina Leichty sees this collective investment across generations as the true engine behind the city’s progress.
“There’s this very peculiar sense in Goshen where people are willing to put their differences aside… and come together for the common good,” Leichty says. “There’s a recognition that we rise together and we fall together. That’s how these extraordinary things happen, like cherishing our tree canopy.”
Photo Credit: Emily Allison / American Forests
This spirit of selflessness is one of the key lessons Sawatsky-Kingsley hopes to impart to students, an understanding that the work is for their community, and the generations that will inhabit it long after them.
“You may never benefit from [planting trees], and you may never know who’s going to benefit from them, but somebody will,” he says. “Caring for trees is caring for people. If you care for your kids, for your grandkids, then you got to plant a tree.”
environmental integrity, resilience or sustainability, at least in this part of the world, in the eastern part of the United States,” Sawatsky- Kingsley says.
Photo Credit: Emily Allison / American Forests
Advancing Tree Equity is not fast. But when rooted in trust, local leadership and long-term care, it endures and creates stronger bonds among people and places.
American Forests is there to nurture those bonds by equipping local leaders with the expertise and resources to sustain urban forests, ensuring the lifesaving benefits of canopy reach every resident, now and in the future.
Across the country, a more resilient future is taking root — not from the top down, but from the ground up.
Ciana Williams serves as an account executive for the global communications and creative agency Ruder Finn and writes from Washington, D.C.