Summer Tullai, Key Club Officer and Sophomore, works at her computer. According to Tullai, she has been planning the event for a long time.

Serve Carmel and Carmel Key Club plan to host a volunteer event to plant trees on April 17 in association with Tree-Plenish. The event is organized through Key Club’s Serve Carmel initiative, whose goal is to bridge different CHS service organizations and coordinate local volunteer projects. Volunteers will plant trees that home and business owners can request through Tree-Plenish’s website. Those interested can also sign up to volunteer through the same page.

According to Summer Tullai, Key Club officer, organizer of the event and sophomore, volunteers must have a valid driver’s license or accompany someone who does, as volunteers will need to drive to plant trees in the requested locations. Alternatively, those who request the trees can pick up the saplings. She said approval is pending for space at this school for volunteers to organize and pick up trees.

“We were interested in doing this event because we thought it would be great for the community and also we just have a lot of volunteers that would be interested in doing an event,” Tullai said. “Especially since a lot of the events this year, they can’t be outside because of COVID restrictions, so Serve Carmel became involved because we were really interested in taking on this project.”

Freshman George Emerson said he plans to volunteer to help plant trees. He said this is his first time volunteering with Serve Carmel, but he has experience with both volunteering and planting trees.

“It’s something I’ve done before. I’ve planted trees,” he said. “And I feel like it just helps everyone and it’s something I like to do, kind of. I don’t know how to describe it really, it’s something I like to do.”

According to Tree-Plenish’s website page for this event, people can buy aastern white pine, tulip poplar or eastern redbud saplings for $5, including planting.

According to Julia Dong, Key Club officer and sophomore, volunteers do not have to be in Key Club to get involved.

“I think anyone could be interested or involved,” Dong said. “We wanted members of Key Club to do it, specifically because it is a great opportunity to get in some service hours this year, especially since there are so few in-person opportunities. This provides a great in-person opportunity where you don’t have to be volunteering through your computer screen.”

Key Club sponsor Allyson Ward said while Tullai communicates with her about the event, Tullai primarily organized it.

“Summer keeps me in the loop and listens to any suggestions I may have,” Ward said via email. “The tree planting event is, again, student run.”

Emerson said he thinks the event will benefit many parties.

“(The tree planting event) helps everyone,” he said. “It helps the environment, it gets people to have nice trees in their yard, hopefully be there for a really long time and make Carmel be a better place.”

According to Tullai, many members of the Carmel community have gotten involved. 

“We’ve gotten a lot of community support with this event and I’m very excited about that because it seems like a lot of members of the community really like to help the environment,” Tullai said. “And so I’m excited because we’re almost at 1,000 trees and so I’m excited to see that we will reach our goal (of 1,500 trees).”