Climb a Tree Foundation

Welcome to Climb a Tree!

You may have heard of the Sustainable School Landscape Program Sarah is running at Springbrook State school during their STEM lesson. This is part of a new project Sarah is working on to connect communities with our amazing environment. She like to think of it as 'putting on my environmental scientist 'hat' again, but now connecting communities to landscape sustainability through education and action.

To achieve this, Sarah and Keiran, as well as two friends Mark and Chantal, have been working on starting a not for profit called Climb A Tree Foundation.

Our first program is the Sustainable School Landscape program, which we are offering at this stage to small schools on the Gold Coast. Kieran has brought his work drone to take aerial photos at Springbrook State School and from there we have been mapping, monitoring, planning and implementing sustainability actions with the students for the school landscape. The program is very hands-on so the students feel ownership over their role in the landscape in regards to energy, waste, food, water, biodiversity.   

We have the organisation registered as a not-for-profit and are in the process of putting an application together to go through the Federal Parliament to have it be granted what is called "tax deduct-ability status". This means that folks or organisations who would like to donate can do so and receive a tax deduction for that donation. 

Donations will enable more people to get outdoors learning about our natural world. This will help us to reach our goals for Climb A Tree Foundation and provide a platform for individuals, business, government and other organisations to provide financial support.

In order to be eligible to lodge our application for tax deduct-ability status, we need 50 paying members and would like to invite you to become one of our founding members. We have opened membership at $10 per person and would love for you to become involved.  As a member, you will have the opportunity (and this is not compulsory) to vote on the direction of our organisation and provide input into specific projects at general meetings.

If you are interested in joining, please send your postal address and I will send details to you and information on how to join.

Some further details about Climb A Tree Foundation are as follows:

Purpose

Climb a Tree Foundation is a registered charity with a purpose of providing environmental education and nature-based learning opportunities and resources to the regional, national and international community. The strategic direction of the charity is to provide relevant, scientifically-rigorous, curriculum-aligned and novel education programs and resources in a way that increases understanding amongst community members (especially school and university students) of the importance of ecology and sustainability.

How the organisation works

Climb a Tree Foundation will deliver the programs and resources in a way that utilises natural settings for teaching and engagement, works collaboratively with local governing bodies to maximise the dissemination and uptake of the knowledge and ultimately allows for quantifiable improvements in both community understanding and the condition of our environment.

Specifically this will be facilitated through a top-down approach where Climb a Tree Foundation engages educators and community members/enthusiasts to help create, deliver and update the programs and resources. This team will be funded through grants and charitable donations received by Climb a Tree and all expenditure will be documented. Each of the projects Climb a Tree Foundation run will ensure the following key targets:

1) Project must have a tangible and measurable benefit to the community and the environment relating to the program and/or resources;

2) Project must be defined as having either a regional, national or international scale and must therefore follow recommendations and requirements of any funding or legislative stakeholders at the relevant scale; 

3) All stakeholders collaborating with the project must sign an agreement of understanding with Climb a Tree Foundation that specifies all responsibilities and protection of intellectual property per stakeholder; 

4) Project must strive to involve as many members of community as is reasonable in allowing for local knowledge investment into, and maximal dissemination of learning out of the project; 

5) Project outcomes must be quantified and reported upon annually including financial, action-based and beneficiary (community-based and environmental) statistics.

Charity beneficiaries

For each of Climb a Tree Foundation's desired projects, the exact beneficiaries of the charity's endeavors will vary, but will likely fall into one of the following categories:

• Host environment or ecosystem 
• Community members or school/university students
• Regional, state and national governance bodies
• Other interested parties such as community groups, interest groups and NGOs
• Schools and institutions   

If you would like any more information on Climb A Tree Foundation or the programs we are funding, please call me or email - I would love to talk about it!

Kind regards

Dr Sarah Richardt

Director

19 June 2020

Good morning

I hope you are having an excellent day. I want to share with you some news about a project we are funding - the building of nest boxes for fire-affected wildlife on the Gold Coast.

Climb a tree is funding the materials and Social Enterprise Natura Pacific is donating their time and expertise in the design, construction and installation of the nest boxes. Natura specialises in technical environmental projects, with a wealth of experience in fauna ecology, including nest box installation and monitoring. You can read more about Naturas' awesome team at their website: https://www.natura-pacific.com/our-team/ 

So far we have had 15 nest boxes built that are ready to install!

Thank you to everyone who has donated to Climb A Tree to purchase the materials as well as resources, time and expertise from Natura Pacifc, Elanora Carpentry Club, Taubmans at Burleigh Heads and Neil McLeod (painter)

Our first batch of nest boxes that were constructed by Elanora Carpentry Club.

Our first batch of nest boxes ready to be installed after being painted by Neil McLeod with paint donated by Taubmans at Burleigh Heads.

Bastian, from Natura Pacific, installing a nest box for a project on the Gold Coast.

Squirrel Gliders nesting together in one of Natura Pacific's monitored boxes here on the Gold Coast!

The next phase of the project is to construct more nest boxes as funding comes in and then install and monitor them strategically to increase the number and accessibility of nesting sites for fire-affected wildlife.

Here is a link to our go-fund me page for more information and how to get involved with the project.

 https://au.gofundme.com/f/help-us-build-nestboxes-for-fireaffected-wildlife

Thank you so much for your support!

Kind regards

Dr Sarah Richardt

Director