NGOZI, INC. Presents They're Just Away

07/24/2024

May Peace Be With You All
Love One Another
We Are All We Got
Love Yah!

04/10/2023

Greetings Everyone,

Rockey Gleason and I are scheduling a repeat performance to help remove invasive vegetation in the forested buffer adjacent to NGOZI'S They're Just Away Living Memorial Garden in Reservoir Park, Harrisburg, PA just off of State Street for next Saturday, April 15th, 2023 starting at 10:00am. All are welcome to help out. It's a little later in the season than we would like for this kind of thing as many shrubs are already leafed out. We'll make piles of brush as before. Perhaps the word could be spread to increase turnout for this event. Let's hope for reasonably good weather. Regardless of how warm it might be, please wear long pants, long sleeves and sturdy shoes, as there is some poison ivy in the area. If you can please bring your own tools and gloves.

We will be scheduling more of this type of removal as well as organizing the garden plans. Hoping for us to do some tree planting in a couple of weeks and again in the fall of 2023.

A small overview of the project: They’re Just Away, Living Memorial” Gardens is being established by Harrisburg resident Rafiyqa Muhammad. I was honored to receive a $5,000 Mira Lloyd Dock award October 2020 for urban conservation work in the City of Harrisburg. My goal is to create community living memorial gardens, for residents & community members who have lost loved ones through violence, sickness. Through this type of participation and engagement in reforesting with native trees, creating urban riparian buffers, establishing edible landscapes, will enable our community members to work through their grief, have a safe place to unwind and bond with nature, learn about trees and begin to heal.

Those who chose to participate in this project have the ability to care and manage their trees and immediate surrounding. A, 2-year commitments are one of the recommendations for involvement in the living memorial garden project.

If you want more information or how you can volunteer or sponsor the memorial, please feel free to contact me.

May Peace be with you,

Rafiyqa

11/10/2022

Subject: Reservoir park workday scheduled
Looking for volunteers to help out this Saturday to help remove invasive vegetation in the forested buffer adjacent to the Just Away Living Memorial garden. Saturday, Nov 12th from 9:00 to 12:00. All are welcome to help out. Perhaps the word could be spread to increase turnout for this event. Let's hope for reasonably good weather.

See you there,
Rocky & Rafiyqa

10/18/2022

The project called NGOZI PRESENTS “They’re Just Away” Living Memorial at Reservoir Park, is a collaborative effort by community members, state, city, and local officials, spearheaded by Rafiyqa Muhammad, and YOU are INVITED!

I plan to donate100 Trees as promised to those whom I've all ready spoken with. This benefits our natural landscape and remember those lost to the pandemic, violence, and other causes. Taking root as a living memorial in the City of Harrisburg, PA on November 5th, 2022 both days from 10am to 1pm, Reservoir Park entrance (State Street) can atop by and pick up their tree/trees. Families/friends will be required to fill out an application to receive memorial trees and where in the park they can plant Spring 2023.
Contact Rafiyqa Muhammad for more information: [email protected] 717-255-9739

Those who get memorial trees must make a two-year commitment to care for and to assure their success if planted in the Park.
Participants will learn throughout the program how to plant, over winter, basic tree care, make contacts and decide where to plant in Reservoir Park. Others may plant their tree/trees elsewhere with the assistance of Ngozi volunteers. This memorial gives a chance to work through grief, but also to learn how we can reforest a beautiful area like this.

The donated trees and supplies are part of the $5,000 prize given to Rafiyqa Muhammad by the Keystone 10 Million Trees Partnership, when the partnership presented her the 2020 Mira Lloyd Dock award for her conservation and urban beautification work in under-represented portions of her community. The partnership is coordinated by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF) in Pennsylvania.

Audubon Mid-Atlantic and the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation & Natural Resources (DCNR) as the Kittatinny Conservation Landscape Coalition has donated $5,000 in the form of native plants to make the gardens around the living memorial trees even more beautiful.

“The Kittatinny Ridge runs along here, and this is a great place because it’s an international bird flyway for migration,” Kristen Hand, DCNR internal leader for the conservation landscape program said. Parks like this can be an oasis for them to get what they need as far as food, water, and shelter from storms.”

“The Donald B. and Dorothy L. Stabler Foundation is supporting this locally-driven community conservation program at Reservoir Park to increase bird-friendly habitat in Harrisburg, encourage inclusive environmental leadership, support neighborhood beautification efforts, and make conservation work relevant to surrounding communities,” Jeanne Barrett Ortiz, Senior Program Manager of Landscape Conservation at Audubon Mid-Atlantic.

The memorial park will also help restore the historic Reservoir Park, which was put into place by Mira Lloyd Dock herself and is now home to the Civil War Museum.

Dock is recognized as the first Pennsylvania woman to lead the way in forest conservation. Dock teamed up with Harrisburg businessman J. Horace McFarland on a Harrisburg plan that built 900 acres of new city parks, public lakes, athletic fields, playgrounds, and sewage control that won national attention. plant and sewer lines.
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08/19/2022