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Community Corner

TreePeople Celebrates 'An Evening Under the Harvest Moon'

Volunteers are honored and money is raised Saturday for the environmental group, which is headquartered on the Beverly Hills border.

held its annual fundraiser "An Evening Under the Harvest Moon" on Saturday night to celebrate the people and partnerships that have helped the environmental organization make the Los Angeles area a greener place to live and work.

Celebrity couple Harry Hamlin and Lisa Rinna hosted the honors portion of the evening, recognizing TreePeople’s accomplishments of the past year and dedicating one of the awards to a volunteer and donor who passed away in July 2010.

“This year we are dedicating the Volunteer of the Year Award in memory of Barbara Goldenberg,” TreePeople Communications Manager Terese Tarantino Greco said. “Barbara was responsible for numerous greening projects in her lifetime in the Brentwood area, including bringing trees to Brentwood’s elementary schools, working with the coral trees and creating a lot of different gardens.”

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Marlene Grossman, this year’s winner of what will now be called the Barbara Goldenberg Volunteer of the Year Award, said she felt very honored to be the first recipient of the award named for her dear friend.

“Barbara was a very wonderful woman and to think that I could be linked to her in that way is very special to me,” Grossman said.

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Grossman was honored for founding Pacoima Beautiful, for her decades of work with TreePeople and for being a past board member.

“I am very excited to be honored tonight. I have worked with TreePeople for many years and I have the deepest respect for this organization and the work they do,” Grossman said.

Compton resident Delia Barrera received the Rising Star Award for her work with the Citizen Forestry en Espanol program. Barrera has organized five campus greening projects in Compton, all while raising five children, not owning a car and not speaking English.

Barrera used to help her father plant trees in her native Mexico, so when she moved to Compton and saw the schools with no trees and no shade, she wanted to do something to change that.

“She showed up to a tree planting one day in Compton and found out about TreePeople and the rest is history,” said Barrera’s translator.

Southern California Gas Company was presented with the Partner in Community Award for more than 20 years of support for TreePeople and its programs.

The more than 400 guests dined under the stars during the awards ceremony and then were treated to TreePeople founder and President Andy Lipkis’ annual State of the Forest Address and entertainment by Sara and Sean Watkins of the Grammy Award-winning band Nickel Creek.

Organizers hoped to raise more than $400,000 at the event, which will fund TreePeople’s many environmental programs. 

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