Giving Thanks
We are giving thanks – genuine, warm, heartfelt, sincere, passionate thanks. And a lot of it.
We give thanks for our region’s vibrant natural areas – our mature forests, scenic rivers, unique wildlife habitats and great Lake Erie. From Kelleys Island to the Pennsylvania state line, we’ve permanently preserved more than 630 properties and are quickly closing in on 50,000 acres.
We give thanks for our region’s working farms for their beauty and their life-giving produce. We help farmers preserve Ohio’s bountiful food, dairy and feedstock farms, cattle ranches and vineyards, which are disappearing rapidly. We’ve permanently preserved nearly 200 farms and completed the two largest farmland protection projects ever in Ohio.
We give thanks for the opportunity to help clean and green our cities. While the initial focus of Thriving Communities, our urban revitalization program, was to establish and support county land banks, this program now conducts property inventories, plants trees, secures funding for demolition and greening, and does cutting-edge research. We have raised enough money to enable communities to demolish more than 35,000 dilapidated and abandoned homes. We’ve planted 3,500 robust trees and distributed nearly 1,500 tree saplings to green up neighborhoods.
We give thanks for you – our donors, our volunteers and our community partners – for your tremendous support. All of our work is made possible by your continued interest and generous gifts. Thank you for nurturing us so that we can nurture our region.
Together, we are building thriving, prosperous communities nourished by vibrant natural areas, working farms, and healthy cities.
Happy Thanksgiving!