Planting Trees in Dog Parks? COUNT ME IN!
What’s better than your company coordinating with multiple local charities to facilitate doggo adoptions and planting trees all while eating hot dogs from the local Sonic and drinking free cokes donated by the local Coca Cola branch? Doing all that, plus being able to bring your dog to a company event!
Event Overview
On October 13th, 2019, Berg Pipe coordinated with ReTreePC to help rebuild the local ecosystem of Panama City, Florida by planting much-needed trees in the Al Helms Dog Park. The weekend of this event marked a year since Hurricane Michael devastated the Panama City community and surrounding areas, displaced many, and forever changed the landscape of our area. In the aftermath of this natural disaster, much of the local foliage has been downed, leaving the region lacking in shade, community green spaces, and scenic escapes.
Nonprofit Organizations
To learn more about ReTreePC, the effect of Hurricane Michael on the region, and why rebuilding the natural tree canopy of the area is important, please visit https://retreepc.com/. Keep up to date on their many events by following them on Facebook (@ReTreePC) and Instagram (@ReTreePC)!
Lucky Puppy, a nonprofit well-known in our Panama City community for their great work rehabilitating and re-homing displaced dogs in the area, was also able to attend with a whole herd of adoptable pups. We really enjoyed being able to work with them on this project! They always have furbabies available for adoption, which you can check out (or donate or sign up to volunteer) by visiting their website (http://www.theluckypuppy.org/), Facebook page (@TheLuckyPuppy), or their Instagram page (@luckypuppyrescue).
Additional Organizations and Vendors
We have many others to thank as well. Our Panama City local community really pulled through on this event! We had so many people and organizations participating in this event that it’s difficult to name them all. If we’re missing anyone, please send us an email and we will make sure to update this post as needed.
In order to continue raising money for ReTreePC during the event, we had two raffles—one for the community and one for Berg Pipe employees in attendance. The prize for each was a kayak and basket filled with highly-coveted Berg Merch! Our winners for these two raffles were Pat Cobb for our Berg raffle and Courtney Puckett for our community raffle!
We had a couple of other fundraising events prior to our Retree-ing day in the park as well. With help from Mission BBQ, our BPP location had a lunch to help raise money for this event. Additionally, we sold limited-edition ReTreePC t-shirts with designs from Siarra Guillory.
The local branch of Lamar Advertising also helped out with a billboard announcing the event.
The local news, WMBB, came to the event and did a great job covering all the activities happening during this day. To view their coverage of the event, use this link.
Panama City PetSmart was also able to join with helpful tips and tricks for dogs. Don’t forget to follow them on Facebook as well: @PetSmartPanamaCityFL.
Of course, we would also like to add a special thank you to Ty Farris and his team at ReTreePC and Panama City Parks and Rec. They did a great job in helping us set this up, planted the large oak trees and many of the others before the event to eliminate safety hazards for kids and pups on the day of the event, and coordinated many of the vendors that were able to attend. We look forward to working with them in the future!
The Event was a Great Success!
Berg Pipe, through company, employee, and community contributions, was able to donate to ReTreePC, help provide the 350 trees to the public, the trees in the dog parks themselves, landscaping projects and additional benches to be added to the Al Helms dog park in Panama City as well as donate to Lucky Puppy. This was all made possible by fundraising efforts related to this event and as part of Berg Pipe’s yearly company contributions to 501(c)3 charities! Additionally, we were able to provide a great and successful family-friendly event at a difficult time when these sorts of events matter the most. Our community and the surrounding areas are still rebuilding a year after Hurricane Michael. We are thankful for this opportunity to focus our attention on looking forward, on rebuilding, on growth, and on healing. It is truly a point of pride to see our logo on the main Al Helms Dog Park sign! And we hope every event going forward is as successful and as meaningful as this one.
Success in Numbers:
Berg Pipe, with employee and community donations, raised almost $!!K for ReTreePC and Lucky Puppy.
~700 people from the community attended
6 oaks and 4 red maples were added in the park
A bench, plaque, and some landscaping additions around the areas have been added.
As always, if you have any questions or if you would like to submit photos for the event to be added here, email: socialmedia@bergpipe.com!