Jacob Liberman

At twelve, Jacob Liberman stood apart as a volunteer planting trees and, two years later, is using his enthusiasm and organizational ability by joining the organization, treepeople.org, and creating a 41-volunteer project.

After attending several plantings around the Los Angeles area, he developed a service project for his Eagle Scout award. Jacob partnered with the Wilmington Recreational Center and treepeople.org and developed a project that incorporated 41 volunteers in the planting of 18 trees (3 more than originally projected) in a day-long project last March. He has since returned both on his own and with arborists from Treepeople.org on several occasions to maintain the saplings.

At fourteen years old, Jacob has an empathy and understanding of the world around him that is far beyond his years. He relates well to children and adults, as evidenced by his management of 41 volunteers of all ages that day in the accomplishment of his tree-planting project. He provided food, drinks with his own funds and all the necessary tools and amazed the group with his vision and focus to complete the job and make it fun. His love for the environment is obvious as is the fact that he is a caring and mature young man.

Jacob’s project helped beautify a park and recreation center in a depressed economic area of Los Angeles and encourage others more than twice his age to follow his lead.