Growing Trees and Leaders for Boston’s Future
Our Teen Urban Tree Corps (TUTC) Program has two components: a paid school-year program and a 6-week paid summer program.
Our School Year Program (SYP) runs Mondays through Thursdays from 4pm to 6pm. Teens are required to participate at least twice per week. Participants are paid $15 / hour to care for trees, develop education material, attend outreach events, create social media posts, and plan for our second annual Teen Tree Summit.
For our summer program, 20+ teens, under supervision of young adult Team Leaders, spend 25 hours per week learning about the importance of trees and how to care for trees through watering sessions, mulching, and identification exercises. At the same time, they get to know their neighborhood forests, and advocate for their community’s health and well-being. The program starts in late June and runs through mid August.
Past Teen Urban Tree Corps Programs
Our teens learn about trees through field trips – including this one to a research station at the Harvard Forest.
In addition to field trips, learning activities, and professional development, this past summer our teens committed themselves to watering over 200 and mulching over 100 street trees in Dorchester.
In 2021, 15 Boston teenagers joined our reinvigorated summer program. Teens gained hands on experience in the field of forestry through field trips, talks from professional in the field of forestry, and the creation of micro-forest plans for their neighborhoods.
In 2020, TUTC went remote. We hired 15 Boston teens. They explored the history, the present, and the future of five community forests in Boston: North Dorchester, South Dorchester, Hyde Park, West Roxbury, and Roslindale. Each group produced an artifact or video about their community forest.
In 2019, with support from Boston’s Department of Youth Employment and Engagement and the Private Industry Council, SFTT launched its inaugural Teen Urban Tree Corps program. Nine Boston youth collected data on nearly 5,000 trees and empty planting sites in Roxbury and Dorchester.