Nonprofit Spotlight: Southside ReLeaf

In Richmond’s Southside, neighborhoods with the least tree canopy face a stark reality—a life expectancy up to 20 years shorter than other parts of the city. This alarming disparity, uncovered during the Richmond 300 Master Planning process, inspired Sheri Shannon and Amy Wentz to take action. Determined to address the environmental and health inequities in their community, they founded Southside ReLeaf, an organization dedicated to improving quality of life through greening initiatives, education, and advocacy. By empowering residents and restoring tree coverage, Southside ReLeaf is working to create a healthier, more equitable future — one green space at a time.

Lisa Aikins-Afful has been the Outreach and Engagement Coordinator of Southside ReLeaf since 2023, and is responsible for working with volunteers, partner organizations, private industry and government officials to promote and coordinate greening efforts and climate education. This year, Southside ReLeaf planned a project for Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service to clean up neighborhood spaces near a new park on Ernest Road. In partnership with Groundwork RVA, volunteers removed over 1,000 pounds of bagged trash — weighed by Parks, Recreation, and Community Facilities — along with more than a dozen discarded tires. And all of this was accomplished in less than two hours thanks to dedicated volunteers!

Our team had an opportunity to speak with Lisa to learn more about how volunteers drive Southside ReLeaf’s mission forward.

What does your role as an Outreach and Engagement Coordinator involve?
I have a lot of different engagements in my role. I work with volunteers, our partner organizations in the nonprofit space, private industry and government officials for greening and educational efforts. Schools and faith places have pre-existing audiences that help us share information about how to combat climate change.

I engage residents and neighbors of the communities and involve them in the process of creating new green spaces. I have the opportunity to engage with other organizations with similar initiatives and organizations whose work focuses on the same populations via different initiatives when our work overlaps. I also work with local university faculty to support environmental research, students who express interest in supporting environmental efforts, and community members as they rally together at their meetings to highlight and address issues that they face.

What do you enjoy about the work? 

It is a special space to hold being in a position to request and listen to people’s stories of lived experiences during community engagement. As a big proponent of access to green spaces, I really enjoy working with Richmond Parks, Recreation and Community Facilities. Creating a new park (along Ernest Road in South Richmond) has been a uniquely challenging, educational and enjoyable project.   

How does Southside Releaf leverage volunteers? 
Southside ReLeaf mainly utilizes volunteers to support our greening efforts. Volunteers are the reason we have been able to plant and maintain over 1,000 new trees in South Richmond since our founding, and they’ve been instrumental in developing the new park at Ernest Road by clearing invasive ivy and plant debris. I have been very mindful in requesting our large groups to verbally share how they found out about our volunteer opportunity this past year, and I would say 85% find us thanks to the CFengage platform hosted by the Community Foundation. For this support, we are so grateful.

Can you tell us about an impactful project that was recently completed?  

Though our main focus the past eight months has been on the removal of English Ivy from a new canopied park space at Ernest Road, Southside ReLeaf and Groundwork RVA hosted a neighborhood cleanup near the new park for MLK Jr. Day, and it was a very successful event! We were maxed out with twenty volunteers and had more on our waitlist. Together, we extracted over a dozen discarded tires, in addition to lots of bagged trash. Parks, Recreation, and Community Facilities took the trash we collected and weighed it, and it was over 1,000 pounds!  All that was accomplished in less than two hours because of the volunteer support we had. We were also able to tour our volunteers through the new park space and share excitement for the next phase of park development: upcoming planting in the Spring!
What is your favorite thing about engaging volunteers? 
 
I love the positive energy that radiates throughout everyone during our time together, and after. We are so much more powerful when we act together. Getting work accomplished is the mission, but the by-products of doing that with others are joy, connection, pride, purpose, fulfillment, fun, and for me personally, as it relates to each individual who joins, gratitude!