Prouty Garden supporters made a strong showing last Thursday at the Department of Public Health (DPH) hearing on Boston Children’s Hospital’s (BCH) proposed expansion project. We filled the room with love for the Prouty Garden and stormed the podium with speaker after powerful speaker. Our group included doctors and other healthcare providers, current and past patients and patient families, a landscape architect, a tree preservationist, members of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe, men, women and children of all ages—speaking directly to the hospital leadership about why the Prouty Garden must be preserved. It also included the beloved and world-renowned pediatrician and pioneer of child psychiatry, Dr. T. Berry Brazelton, who remembered children begging to go out to the Prouty Garden so they could look up into the sky and "see God straight." You can read more about last week’s hearing on our website, at: http://www.saveprouty.org/blog/2016/2/26/prouty-supporters-make-strong-showing-at-dph-hearing. Please also follow us on Facebook for more videos, photos and testimony from the hearing, at: https://www.facebook.com/savetheProutyGarden/. We will be sharing some powerful videos from the hearing that you won’t want to miss! What we are asking our supporters to do now is two things: 1. Please consider a donation to keep our efforts going! The DPH will be considering the project for several months while the hospital completes its required 3rd-party cost analysis. We need to keep our legal and PR/social media efforts going strong in that time. We’ve gotten this far through supporter donations but we can only keep going if everyone continues to chip in what they can afford. This is a 100% community-supported, grassroots effort. https://www.gofundme.com/saveprouty 2. Please write to the DPH. Written comments on the hospital Determination of Need (DON) process will be accepted by the Dept. of Public Health up until 5:00 P.M. Monday, March 7, 2016. Department officials were very clear that ALL statements will be taken into consideration, so please know that YOUR VOICE MATTERS. Write to: Massachusetts Department of Public Health Determination of Need Program 99 Chauncy Street Boston, MA 02111 DPH.DoN@state.ma.us Please send us a copy at saveprouty@gmail.com too. Thank you, as always, for your support!