DETROIT, Mich. — The nonprofit Greening of Detroit is hiring 80 local high school students through its Green Corps program. The aim is to fulfill the organization’s overall mission of reforestation and beautification, but also to provide much needed employment to urban youth.

The students’ main job over the summer will be to help care for and maintain the 15,000 trees that have been planted by the organization over the past three years, according to Greening of Detroit President Rebecca Salminen Witt. The students will also help maintain the city’s parks.

In addition, they will receive financial literacy training and career help. They will also have a chance to visit state parks to kayak, hike and swim.

Salminen Witt said each year the group hires between 100-200 youth to help maintain the young trees, which need to be watered by more than just weather in order to stay healthy. After three years, she said, the trees have enough of a root system that they can take care of their own need for water.

Greening of Detroit has planted about 80,000 trees in the city altogether, over a period of 25 years. The Green Corps program has been around since 1998 and has employed more than 1,000 young people during that time.

Chase, the state Department of Natural Resources, the DTE Energy Foundation, Kellogg Foundation and Grow Detroit’s Young Talent program fund this. "Chase’s grants make a greater impact in Detroit because they encourage nonprofit groups to collaborate," said Sarah McClelland, president of Chase in Michigan, in 2011 in Business Wire.

"We are addressing the learning needs of Detroit’s youth throughout the year and providing summer work that teaches solid job skills and help students stay – and do better – in school."

According to the article, Chase donated $530,000 that year to six Detroit nonprofits, with the largest grant going to Greening of Detroit for its Green Corps youth employment program. That was $150,000; this year the bank is donating $200,000 to Greening of Detroit.

"We really get a wide range of support," Witt said. "I think it’s because it does a lot of things for the kids in the city. We also do urban agriculture. We do tree agriculture, prairies, but also workforce development.

"We work with all of the folks in all of the city of Detroit to see what’s possible. The Green Corps program is just part of what we’re doing. All of our programming sort of works together."

When asked about working with Hantz Woodlands, formerly Hantz Farms, Witt said Greening of Detroit hasn’t done anything with the group but that she’d be happy to coordinate a project with it. At one time Hantz had big plans, but city officials cut the enterprise down into just a fraction of what had been envisioned, as reported in last week’s Farm World.

Witt thinks Hantz didn’t do enough community development work to get everybody on board with its enterprise. People ended up not trusting the organization the way they might have otherwise.