This past weekend, Kemba Shakur, Executive Director at Urban Releaf, received the J. Sterling Morgan Award, the highest honor given by the Arbor Day Foundation.
Shakur works daily with low-income communities to plant trees, mentor young people and build neighborhood leaders, and Urban ReLeaf has distributed more than 15,000 trees in total. When she saw that no one else was planting trees in her west Oakland neighborhood, Kemba started to plant them herself. She continued planting in her front yard, on her block, in her neighborhood and eventually throughout the City of Oakland.
Shakur has also made long-term research a priority, working directly with the University of California Davis, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, the California Department of Water Resources and the USDA Forest Service.
We’re so proud to have Kemba and Urban Releaf as a part of the California ReLeaf Network. Congratulations and thank you for all the great work!
Visit the Arbor Day Foundation’s website to see a complete list of award winners.