Leora Rosner,

Founder and Director

As a kid, wherever we lived, I was lucky to always have a tree within clear sight of my bedroom window. The first memorable tree that I related to was a magnificent Magnolia tree in our next-door neighbors’ front yard. The leaves were bigger then my hands and when in bloom those leaves appeared to glow even at night. The proud standing flowers were an awesome sight on any night and shone brightly in the moonlight. At least they did for me. I felt a kinship with that tree. The Magnolia listened to my dreams spoken in whispers inside my head and answered with a gentle rustling. In our back yard we had a young Mimosa tree with delicate fern like branches with fine pinnate leaves and the flowers like puffballs danced in the wind. That Mimosa brought shared visions unseen by others and the visions of those trees have stayed with me to this day.

I have a daughter and my greatest wish for her and her generation; is to give them a world rich with forests and biodiversity across the board and a CO2 count below the present 399-ppm to a safer 350 ppm CO2. This was and still is my wish, my dream for her and for the youth around the world. As a result I became involved in environmental activism. The need to do more; do the deed as it were, rose before me in the forms of the Magnolia tree, the mimosa and more from so many years ago. Our (rain) forests around the world have diminished at an unheard of rate due to, well, pure and simple, greed. If those forests could be replanted…  I asked myself, how could I help, what can I do and how? After all I’m just one person.  One day I saw a presentation on ted.com, which blew my socks off. Here was a man who, together with the local population, planted a rainforest for 1000 orangutans and achieved his goal in an extraordinarily short time. Climate patterns above the region normalized!  I made the decision, pulled up my bootstraps and that is how the Growing Air Foundation saw the light of day.

In May (2020) I made the decision to stop as a non profit organisation and changed the name to Growing Air. I will continue promoting the importance of trees and forests for the planet. I will soon be adding  more images, information and more.