Meet the 2025 Bill Naito Award Winners

Bill Naito Community Trees Award

Protecting, preserving, and growing an urban forest is a monumental task that Urban Forestry cannot do alone. We need dedicated community members to step up and support the trees in our communities. Care for the urban forest truly requires the help of community! One way that we honor those individuals and their hard work is through the Bill Naito Community Trees Award.The Bill Naito Award was created to honor the stories of individuals, organizations or projects that have continued late Urban Forestry CommissionChair (UFC) Bill Naito's work for, and dedication to, trees in our city.

The winners for this year are Dr. Vivek Shandas and the Morning Star Baptist Church.

Dr. Vivek Shandas (Individual Award), for his service on the Urban Forestry Commission from 2015 to 2023, increasing community and scientific awareness around the connection between heat, urban canopy, and public health.

"If we listen closely, the trees and forests are always communicating with us. My work, like many others on the list of Naito awardees, is simply responding to the messages from these one-legged kin. Serving as a member and chair of the UFC was a response to the trees' call for help from a warming climate, and a recognition that engaging in local policy was one of the most important levers for supporting the urban forest. I'm now building on the UFC experience to serve on the City's first Sustainability and Climate Commission, Metro's Bond Oversight Committee, Oregon Environmental Council, the National Urban and Community Advisory Council, and the Tree Fund. I am eternally grateful to the essential (though often thankless) work by City's Urban Forestry group, and those on the UFC who are local champions for bringing community voice to the management of our urban forest."

Morning Star Baptist Church (Group Award), for their two-year-long endeavor to increase greenspace and contribute to growing the urban canopy in the Cully Neighborhood. This effort was in partnership with DePave and funded through a Portland Clean Energy Fundgreen infrastructure grant.

"Morning star is proud to be the recipient of the Bill Naito Community Trees Award. It is such an honor to be recognized for our volunteer work in tree planting preservation, planting, and stewardship which exemplifies the spirit of Bill Naito.Transforming the church's parking lot into a vibrant green space was an extraordinary vision, and we have already had the pleasure of seeing how it has brought joy and laughter to the daycare childcare children enjoying the playground, and members of the church and community enjoying the bounty of fresh vegetable and herbs from the garden.

Morning Star Missionary Baptist Church is one of Portland's oldest African-American churches and owns the building. The sixty-member congregation hosts an extended network of family members who visit and use the Church for special occasions. A second, African-immigrant congregation - Oromo Seventh Day Adventists - also utilize the Church for worship. Pequeñitos Childcare runs a Spanish immersion preschool in the Church, which serves a diverse mix of families and 90 children and is subsidized through Multnomah County Preschool for All.

The new Morning Star Nature Space will serve the Church, neighborhood, and Pequeñitos Child Care, which is a Spanish immersion preschool located at the Church. The new greenspace will complement a transformed Church building that is undergoing clean energy retrofits to serve as a neighborhood resilience hub and refuge during extreme weather events or other emergencies, in addition to offering office space for local small business and non-profits, and be a safe haven for youth programs and activities.

The Morning Star Nature Space hosts 33 shade trees, over 700 perennial plants, 14 accessible raised garden beds, and a 5,500 square foot food garden. A nature playground supports child development through safe and creative play. Altogether the project redirects 415,140 gallons of runoff per year from storm drains into on-site soils to rebuild soils and sequester carbon."