By Aaryaman Singhal, New Class Representative

Groundwork Dallas is the foremost champion of Dallas’ urban wilderness. Our mission is to regenerate, sustain, and improve the Dallas Elm Fork Green Belt and Great Trinity Forest by developing community-based partnerships that educate and empower people, businesses, and organizations to promote environmental stewardship. Everyone deserves a green, healthy, and resilient environment.

To accomplish our mission, we remove litter and debris, provide urban wilderness access, and create community recreation areas and green spaces in Dallas’ Elm Fork Green Belt and Great Trinity Forest. We build community awareness of these places and encourage appreciation and better stewardship of these sites while working to preserve and restore them. We work with area residents and city officials to promote a safer, cleaner, and healthier environment while also engaging in community building through volunteerism, green space development, and education of underserved, urban youth.

Some of our earliest successes include removing 5,000 tires from the Great Trinity Forest in 2010, building a 1.4-mile section of the Bois d’arc soft-surface trail in 2008, and growing our Green Team engagement from 13 in 2015 to 165 in 2018. Between 2017 and 2018, we removed over 130,000lbs of trash, tires, and debris from the Elm Fork and Great Trinity Forest.

Groundwork Dallas rotates Saturday Volunteer Days between our regular project sites and other areas in Dallas based on need. Volunteer days are posted on our calendar on the members page. Non-members can find our upcoming locations by visiting meetup.com and searching for Groundwork Dallas. If any group or corporation would like to participate in a Day of Service event, we can host groups up to 100 people and will happily set something up. For more information,  email volunteer@groundworkdallas.org.

To learn more about our programs, including our work with youth, see the videos below.

Courageous Kids on NBC5: https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/Courageous-Kid-Keriyanna-512076941.html

Pinkston Co-op Program: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zvJqqiU88Y

Organization Overview: https://youtu.be/ohgPOUtjmP8