Holding hands in a circle around a baby oak, the group of overall-clad, sweaty volunteers began their chorus.
“Trees need people, people need trees,” they chant, as is the tradition after planting.
Last Saturday, 10 resident and day students at OVS participated in a tree-planting community service project with Ojai Trees.
Ojai Trees is a nonprofit organization working to reforest the valley with native trees and planting over 100 every year.
“Our vision is a healthy community forest that is sustainable for future generations,” their mission statement reads.
Environmental club leaders Alula Alderson and Roman Cluff-Thompson worked with English teacher Crystal Davis to organize student participation in the effort.
“I love to get students involved in all sorts of service work, but conservation work is my particular passion,” Ms. Davis said. “I think that people are generally at their best when they’re working together to achieve something, and especially something that has a visible and measurable outcome, like planting a tree.”
Trees are crucial to the well-being of the earth and of ourselves for a multitude of reasons. They produce oxygen, improve air quality by storing carbon, slow the rate of global warming, stabilize soil, and provide a home for wildlife, among other benefits.
Junior Clara Ferrer Ferreira, who was taking part in community service for only the second time, appreciated the volunteer environment.
“The part I liked most was being around people who had the same reason for being there,” she said. “Everyone wanted to help the environment.”
Ms. Davis had a similar takeaway.
“I think one of the reasons that we have wound up in such grave environmental danger is because we have dissociated ourselves from the environment,” she said. “We’ve lived in houses and cities and cars so long that we don’t feel a kinship [with nature].”
By getting their hands in the soil and learning how plants are able to thrive, the OVS volunteers were able to nurture that kinship again and reconnect with their roots.