Parke REMC program helps with 4th-grade foresters USA Project

Courtesy Photo. Staci Parent's fourth-grade students at Bainbridge Elementary show off the trees that were provided to them as part of Parke County REMC's Envirowatts program. The Program helps raise awareness about Arbor Day in schools and provides trees to all fourth-grade students. Approximately 660 trees were delivered to students this year.

Parke County REMC Envirowatts Program recently purchased trees for fourth-grade students through Fourth Grade Foresters USA project for Arbor Day.

The project has four major goals: To revitalize observation of Arbor Day in America's schools; to send every fourth-grader home with his or her own tree to care for; to support employments of workers with disabilities (each tree is individually packaged for distribution by workers with disabilities); and finally to bring schools, private individuals, businesses and organizations together to have a direct positive impact on the urban forests of their communities.

Approximately 660 trees were delivered to 10 different schools within the REMC service area, incuding Bainbridge Elementary. Chelsea Goodwin from Parke County REMC and Gregory Hayes from Parke Professional Services helped deliver the trees to the local schools.

Parke County REMC's Envirowatts program (which funded the purchase of the prepackaged trees) includes REMC members that pay an additional $0.01 per kWh up to 1000 kWh for the purchase of power generated from renewable energy sources.

This extra money is currently being deposited in the Envirowatts Fund and is used for environmental purposes or projects in its service area

Parke County REMC is a member of the Wabash Valley Power Association and serves more than 11,000 members in Parke, Putnam, Clay, Fountain, Montgomery and Vigo counties in Indiana.

Parke County REMC is also one of more than 600 Touchstone Energy cooperatives in the nation.