During their senior year of high school, Sethu and Lizzy wanted to do something to positively impact the environment. They reflected on the amount of paper they had used throughout their years of schooling and decided to plant trees to offset the amount of paper used in their high school in an academic year. Some quick calculations told them that 230 trees would need to be planted to reach this goal. Rather than planting the trees on their own, they wanted to involve the community so that everyone would think a little more about the ways we impact our environment and how we might be more sustainable. They advertised this event to the residents of Mansfield with the options of ordering trees to be planted in people’s yards and volunteering to plant trees on the day of the event. That May, about 40 volunteers planted 330 trees around the town of Mansfield.

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After seeing the enthusiasm from their town and helping another local school host a similar event, Sethu and Lizzy realized this idea may be something other schools were interested in. Unfortunately, the Covid-19 pandemic hit that spring, so no events were held, but Sethu and Lizzy spent the summer thinking about how to expand their mission to other schools. They turned their senior project idea into a 501(c)(3) nonprofit called Tree-Plenish and recruited 25 other college students to help out with marketing, day-to-day operations, and mentoring high school students through hosting their own community tree-planting events. With an original goal of 10 schools in Massachusetts, the Tree-Plenish team exceeded its expectations and worked with 85 schools across 20 states.