Outdoor Adventures (Aventuras Afuera) - Jardin
Year 1 Annual Report |
Jump to annual report details (2023-2025)| Amount | $699,943 |
| Grantee | Regents of the University of California |
| Award Year | 2022 |
| Funding Source | General Fund, Outdoor Equity Program |
| Project Type | Program Operation |
| Project Status | In Progress |
Description
Conduct the Outdoor Adventure (Aventuras Afuera): Jardin de Las Rosas Program for residents near the Jardin de Las Rosas in the City of Santa Barbara. This program will include approximately 109 activity days in the community for approximately 6,600 participants and approximately 35 trips to natural areas for approximately 1,800 participants during four years of programming.
Activities in the community will include Central Coast Youth Climate Advocates; Discovery and Solution Based Experiential Learning; and Know Before You Go: Outdoor Preparation.
Trips to natural areas outside of the community will include Coastal Discovery and Coastal Geology at Morro Bay; Tide Pool Ecosystems & Invasive or Native plants at Montana del Oro State Park; Local Giants at the San Simeon Elephant Seal Sanctuary and Hearst Castle San Simeon State Park; Watershed in Your Backyard at Rancho el Chorro; Naturalist 101 at Fairfield Osborn Preserve and Mt. Tamalpais State Park; Giants of the Sky and Rock Adventure at Pinnacles National Park; Insect and Water Quality Detectives at Lopez Lake; Communication in the Sky, Humans Before Us (Native American Instruction) and Plants We Eat at Oso Flaco State Park; Adaptation, What is It? at Cero Alto; Fishy Knowledge and Nature in Use at Cambria, Cayucos, and Harmony Headlands; Mindfulness & Meditation at Stenner Creek Trail; What is a Beach? at Leadbetter and Santa Barbara Beach; Survivor: Channel Islands Edition at Channel Islands National Park; Wildlife Connections at the Santa Barbara Zoo; Storytelling Through Art at Chumash Painted Cave State Historic Park; Water, Water! at Lake Nacimiento; Big Heart: Tall Trees at Calaveras Big Trees State Park and Lake Tahoe; We Live Underthings at Santa Margarita; Backbone, Who Needs One? at Monterey and Big Sur; Out on the Water Adventures at Castaic Lake; Coastal Discovery and Coastal Geology at Arroyo Burro Beach County Park; and White Water Rafting.
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Community Home Base Location
510 N. Salsipuedes Santa Barbara, CA 93103
| County | Santa Barbara |
| Assembly District | AD 37 Gregg Hart (D) |
| Senate District |
SD 19 Monique Limón (D) |
| Congressional District | CD 24 Salud O. Carbajal (D) |
Program Goals
Service Learning/Career Pathway/Leadership Opportunities
Outdoor Program Coordinator Assistant - To help college and university students build career skills, help them build their resumes, and gain experience in the workforce. The goal is to recruit youth who are representative of the community and can offer their lived experience and expertise in culturally adapting and delivering culturally responsive programs. Prioritize will be given to hiring students who are bilingual and bicultural. The university/college students will be trained in delivering science-based curricula, Positive Youth Development (PYD), and youth inclusion. They will mentor middle and high school youth to co-lead educational lessons, deliver programs, and provide support to youth. 36 Residents
Parent Outreach Coordinator(s) - To encourage parents to be involved in the outdoor equity program and help parents’ build environmental literacy and knowledge of the outdoors. This will help provide career development and support parents with developing the skills that make them more competitive in the workplace. 20 Residents Outdoor Exploration Mentors - To provide training and professional development to adults in conducting outdoor education. It will build capacity for future outdoor programs, provide opportunities for leadership, and help eliminate barriers for low-income and undocumented adults to participate in programming.
Outdoor Exploration Mentors will learn about environmental justice and natural resources alongside youth leaders. This will also increase their comfort with outdoor exploration and increase their ability to participate in the outdoors. Outdoor Exploration Mentors will become certified 4-H volunteers. 50 Residents
Teacher Assistants - (TAs) Teens as Teachers - To help provide an incentive and create opportunities for teens, provide teens with stipends to attend and assist with the Outdoor Equity Program. It is a goal to give youth meaningful service-learning opportunities to be involved in the planning, organizing, and implementation of programming. This will both help address equity and help youth gain early work experience, leading to youth learning life/career skills that will be transferable to higher-skilled job opportunities. The ultimate goal is to promote college and career readiness. Youth will be taught about applying to scholarships and the importance of documenting service-learning and volunteer hours for scholarship applications. 26 Residents
Environmental Justice Teen Advocates -Youth who agree to participate in the Environmental Justice Teen Advocates program and learn more about Environmental Justice advocacy and become champions for Environmental Justice. Including but not limited to advocating for sound policies and promoting community change and education on Environmental Justice issues such as but not limited to climate change, green energy, etc. 26 Residents
Partnerships
People’s Self-Help Housing
Will recruit youth and adults from many properties and Learning Centers to take part in the activities while also incorporating educational curriculum in the Enrichment component of the general after-school programming that currently is conducted year-round. People’s Self-Help Housing has agreed to be the community home base and will partner with 4-H to successfully deliver the Outdoors Adventure Program at their Learning Community Center.
Camp Keep (Rancho El Chorro)
Will provide integrating a service-learning project to rebuild and/or refurbish a large-scale watershed model. Camp Keep will assist with incorporating education on water conservation, watershed management, provide a variety of interactive environmental and science education using educational activities aligned with NGSS and environmental literacy standards. Participants will learn about how the large-scale watershed model is used to provide education to others and how they can be involved in this service-learning project. Camp Keep will provide the space and funding to build the large-scale watershed model on site.
Project Learning Tree
Will provide training 4-H Staff, People’s Self-Help Housing Staff, adult volunteers, and youth how to utilize Project Learning Tree Curriculum. They will train staff and youth about best practices for implementing the curriculum lessons around environmental stewardship, climate change, water conservation, and delivering outdoor education programs. Project Learning Tree staff will provide support on project implementation using Project Learning Tree curriculum.
Mentoring
The grant will help build the capacity of both People’s Self-Help Housing and the 4-H Youth Development Program to develop and grow outdoor education programs. This grant will have provided staff with training needed to carry out quality environmental science and stewardship programs. Once the staff is trained at the homesite, they will be able to continue to deliver and implement educational lesson plans on environmental science and stewardship, climate change, environmental justice, nature, etc. Staff will also be trained on delivering experiential learning and hands-on educational activities that incorporate positive youth development principles. Staff will also understand the importance of youth-adult partnerships, youth empowerment, and youth voice. This will help staff continue to provide quality youth development programs that help cultivate youth leaders that tackle social justice issues such as environmental justice.
4-H will also continue the Environmental Justice Teen Advocates Program and will integrate them with the California 4-H True Leaders in Equity Teen TaskForce. 4-H will also help connect them with the local STEAM Youth Taskforce and the 4-H STEM State Committee. 4-H will continue to support and connect youth with multiple ways they can continue their environmental advocacy journey. Youth will be selected based on their involvement with the Outdoor Adventures Program and/or expressed interest in learning more about Environmental Justice. The youth mentored during the grant period will also be invited to come back and assist with the continuation of the program. People’s Self-Help Housing and 4-H are both committed to continuing education on environmental justice, environmental science, and stewardship well beyond the grant award period.
Annual Report Details
Programs may span from one year to multi-year, not to exceed four years. The specific length of the program is contained in the description above.
| Category | Total |
| Youth Served | 295 |
| Days for Activities in the Community | 12 |
| Nature Area Trips | 6 |
List of Educational Goals Achieved
2023
Educational goals that were achieved thus far include, students learned about flora and fauna including invasive species versus native species and how adverse of an impact being out of balance can be, how to conserve natural areas through private conservatorship, state and federal land preservation, etc., some parts of the history of California and how the indigenous people lived symbiotically with the land and their surrounding flora and fauna, the students learned about endangered species and how the populations of animals are impacted by land development by growing human populations. Methods used to achieve these objectives include collaboration inside and outside the organization, staff and student leader professional trainings, and learning from experts in their field.
List of Formed Partnerships
2023
List partnerships: Santa Barbara Zoo, Ty Warner Sea Center, Santa Barbara AirBus, Island Packers, La Katrina Authentic Mexican Cocina, Cal Poly Student Services, Neal Taylor Nature Center, 4-H, Parent leaders within our communities. Description and lessons learned: The partnerships have led to more thorough lessons for our students. The staff and volunteers at the sites we've visited helped explain the local flora and fauna as well as history in a thorough and fun way for our students to understand. 4-H in particular really helped us out by showing us the ropes and working together to find activities and sites to visit as well as helping us coordinate transportation. Our Parent leaders really helped us keep our students on track during out trips and it was really fun to see them experience certain locations and activities for the first time as well. This is a HUGE accomplishment for us as many of these parents are coming from marginalized backgrounds where they didn't feel safe or able to explore the out doors; because of our trips we heard a lot of them say things like, "that wasn't that far!" and, "I'd like to come back and visit."
Lessons
2023
One of the main unforeseen challenges was that we planned too many activities per field trip. Everything took longer than expected and we ended up scrapping at least one lesson/activity each trip - but it was better to over-plan than to under-plan! Another unforeseen challenge was to make sure we chartered a bus with a restroom on board. I don't know what we would have done had we gone a different route.
