Over the past several months, I've been blessed to be able to work with some organizations and causes that lie very close to my psyche. As most of you already know, our natural world and the protection of our open spaces is a huge thing for me, and plays a major role in my life. When I was approached by the 50-year old World Forestry Center in Portland, Oregon to help usher them into a new era, defined by reversing the trends of irresponsible mass deforestation and forest exploitation by protecting the health of forests and sustainable community-managed forestry, how could I say no?
In December, I was honored to be with them as they hosted Nobel Peace prize author and climate scientist Dr. Steven Running as he gave a luncheon and public lecture on climate change, coinciding with the Paris Climate Change Conference. Well, just earlier this month, I was blessed to be back in Portland to help the World Forestry Center celebrate it's 50th Anniversary. It was marked by a gathering of their international fellows, international board members, spectacular dinners and desserts, and performances by BodyVox and Brothers Jam.
The most inspiring part of it all was hearing the speeches from Executive Director Eric Vines and Chairman of the Board David Hampton, passionately describing how they intend to utilize their resources to help push sustainable forestry and climate change awareness into the 21st century. They recognize that it's the only way that the industry will survive and they're not afraid to forge ahead and make those difficult decisions to get it there. To see the board and the staffers of the World Forestry Center and the international fellows of the World Forest Institute enthusiastically support these ideals and visions was incredibly inspiring.
In any case, just wanted to share my experience and a video recap of the gala. My utmost thanks and appreciation to Wendy Mitchell, Eric Vines, Amber Morrison, Leigh Goldberg, Sara Wu, Chandalin Bennett, Reade Weber, and the rest of the team at the World Forestry Center and World Forest Institute for allowing me to be a part of the thing. It has been an absolute pleasure working with them and I look forward to the next era of the WFC. I'd also like to thank Cooper Howard from GingerFilms for his dedicated help and support with both this project and the aformentioned Climate Change Event.
All images and videos shot on the Samsung NX1.
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