Ideas Take Root in a Nonprofit Group Where Kids Are Boss

The silver cup on the table near the front door is the first tip-off the office is like no other in El Segundo.

The engraved trophy is an award from a prestigious national group. And it’s filled with bubble gum.

Down the hall, a citation signed by former President Ronald Reagan and a framed resolution from the California State Assembly hang on the wall of the chief administrator’s office. They’re next to a poster called “Adventures of Himpy Doo-Dah, the Time Traveler Cat.”

Working at her desk, board president Sabrina Alimahomed is preparing to fly out of town to receive a cash prize from a major corporation. But her itinerary is not on her mind:

She’s mulling over 10th-grade homework.

Welcome to the headquarters of the Tree Musketeers--the nation’s only nonprofit corporation run by children.

For six years, its pint-size leaders have planted trees and promoted environmental education. Begun at a vacant lot at the edge of town, their program has spread across the country.

They operate with a $500,000 annual budget. They hire their own employees, map out their own strategies and do the follow-up work themselves.

No big deal, say the kids.

“People think kids are lazy, but we’re not,” 14-year-old Sabrina said with a shrug. “Adults need to stop and listen.”

Sabrina established the Tree Musketeers in 1988 as an offshoot of a Girl Scout project. She and a dozen other 8-year-old Brownies had planted a sycamore tree under power lines that separate El Segundo from Los Angeles International Airport next door.

They had planted it because they felt guilty about using paper plates--and thus part of a tree--during a Girl Scout camp-out. “We’d had to, because we didn’t have enough water to wash regular plates,” Sabrina explained.

A friend, Alisa Wise, now 15, suggested the name for the group. And the other girls quickly came up with ideas for projects.

They prodded the El Segundo City Council into celebrating Arbor Day. Then they organized a ceremony that attracted a crowd of 150 and donations of 292 trees.

The group grew quickly from there. Tree Musketeers planted trees at the Hyperion sewage treatment plant and at a nearby oil refinery. Members began teaching ecology to local schoolchildren. Their third Arbor Day celebration turned into a weeklong event.

Along the way, the kids began getting offers of donations. So they recruited their former Girl Scout troop leader, Gail Church, to help keep track of things. Soon, Church was lining up grants from South Bay corporations, such as Chevron and Northrop, and from organizations, such as the U.S. Forest Service and the National Tree Trust.

These days, Church is a full-time employee of the kids (at $25,375 a year).

“Everyone says: ‘Isn’t that cute. The kids have their own group.’ But people don’t get it. This is a redefinition of a youth organization,” said Church, 46.

“When we were out looking for office space, the kids looked at one place and said, ‘Nope.’ The owner called back the next day and asked me why I let the kids boss me around. I tried to tell him: The kids are in charge--they can fire me.”

There are 13 youngsters and five adults on the Tree Musketeers’ board of directors. They meet every month or so in an El Segundo library conference room.

“The kids run the show,” said Eric O’Reilly, a local insurance broker who chairs the board. “I’m almost a figurehead. And I’m not saying that just to be nice.”

For legal purposes, the adults sign agreements and contracts that the youngsters have approved. They also watch out for pitfalls.

“We only stick our noses in things if they have adverse political or legal ramifications,” said O’Reilly, 39. So far, that has never happened.

The children operate a national toll-free environmental hot line and have planted about 700 trees themselves. They also have “adopted out” thousands of “homeless baby trees,” as they put it, to other children.

The youngsters prompted El Segundo officials to speed up the creation of a city recycling program. They were on the committee that drafted the city’s waste management plan and then handled the public education part of the project. Finally, they helped open the city’s first drop-off recycling center.

“They’re very persistent,” said Assistant City Manager Don Harrison, who has seen environmental fervor fade in other people. “They keep it up.”

Two months ago, the Tree Musketeers organized and ran the National Youth Environmental Summit, which brought about 600 youths from ecology groups across the country to Cincinnati. These days, they are adopting local elementary school science classes and working on creating an outdoor education classroom at a vacant lot in El Segundo. They call the site the Tree House.

“Adults think things can’t be done. But we just do it,” said Sabrina, who hopes to study horticulture in college.

The young environmentalists--who have given names such as Prissy and Wiley to pines and willows that they have planted--are modest about their work. They are also typical teen-agers: Sabrina is involved in soccer at El Segundo High, and group co-founder Tara Church, who is 15 and serves as vice president, is a cheerleader there. Tara, who is Gail Church’s daughter, headed July’s youth summit.

“I didn’t believe at first that she really had her own office,” said one of Sabrina’s classmates, Kacey Sloan, 15. “She never brags. She’s normal.”

So it figures that Sabrina is more concerned about making up her schoolwork than the $1,000 prize she will receive today at the end of her three-day, all-expenses-paid trip to Minneapolis.

She is one of four ecologists receiving Master Planter Awards from MasterCard International at the sixth-annual National Urban Forest Conference. There were more than 1,000 nominees from the 50 states; the other three winners are adults from the East, according to the credit card company.

Sabrina was surprised at being singled out.

“I don’t even have a MasterCard,” she said. “They don’t give them to kids.”