Tree Tour Heads to Wood Middle School
Alameda Sun | 11 April 2008

Fruit Tree Tour is rolling through California on its fifth annual tree-planting pilgrimage to California public schools. Participating schools from San Diego to Sacramento invite the popular program to engage students in making a positive on-the-ground change in their local and global communities through a full day of digging, drumming, dancing, eco-hip hop and green theater. The Fruit Tree Tour stopped at Wood Middle School yesterday to plant trees.

The tour features a professional performance that helps urban students to see their neighborhoods as environments ripe for renewal. Also onboard are 65 West African djembes that give students an opportunity to both plant trees and play drums.

Each year indigenous elders are invited on the tour to teach students about long-forgotten ways of the past people of the Americas. ChoQosh Auh'Ho'Oh, a Native American storyteller who taught cross cultural communications for nearly two decades at UC-Berkeley, will be onboard this year's tour sharing a message of hope from Hopi elders.