Trees Atlanta sent two staff representatives, Dana Render and Judy Yi, to the Urban Ecology Center Intensive believing that their organization had the capacity to expand current operations. The Urban Ecology Center’s Executive Director Ken Leinbach had worked with Trees Atlanta Executive Directors and then keynoted at Atlanta’s annual Park Pride conference. There was city-wide excitement about the model Ken shared, and interest in equipping a team with best practices for program growth through the Intensive.

In an interview just two days into the Intensive, Ms. Render shared great admiration for the summer camp-esque experience. The days packed full of learning the UEC model outside in the parks had a significant impact on her -- it was a living example of the program prototyping and operations.

Dana Render with group celebrating the co-learning continuing even after returning home.

Looking back now, six months later, Ms. Render’s most valuable take away from the program was how to create unity in diversity in action on all levels of an organization. She says, “The organizational structure and leadership at the Urban Ecology Center worked to have consistent foundational cultural values while embracing the unique idiosyncrasies of each of the Branch locations. Having multiple branches of any organization can be challenging because of the silo effect that inevitably happens, but at the Urban Ecology Center there was collaborative and synergistic energy among the branches.”

As Trees Atlanta considers program expansion and additional branches, Ms. Render’s observations play an important role in planning. “I also appreciated how diversity was celebrated and used as a vehicle for community buy-in. That each location took into account the residents in the surrounding neighborhood and developed programming that would be valuable to those who would most likely use the center the most.” The Urban Ecology Center and Trees Atlanta remain in conversation, learning together as the Atlanta project moves forward.