EDUCATION(AL) – integrating one or more of the following learning opportunities during the OUTDOOR PROGRAM.

Instruction in arts, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics that connects nature experiences, or environmental stewardship. Here is an example from partner Big Sur Land Trust (BSLT) for their Salinas Based Outdoor Event: All events at the Carr Lake project site have helped foster stewardship of the environment in Salinas residents who have attended events at the Carr Lake project site. This has been achieved through participants learning about the watershed that the project site belongs to and how some of the City of Salinas’ stormwater runoff passes through the project site. This gave participants a visual and understanding of how their contributions to stormwater runoff may affect local open spaces in their city and ultimately our oceans. We also discussed how the proposed project will help retain water in the restoration area for a longer time before it flows out through the reclamation ditch and thus potentially help replenish groundwater aquifers. Participants were also able to learn about the urban heat island effect by experiencing temperature changes when walking from the flat and exposed project site and into the native plant garden.

Foster stewardship of the environment using curriculum pursuant to Public Resources Code, Division 34, Part 4: Statewide Environmental Education (Sections 71300-71305). All Habitat Stewardship Project (HSP) events include elements of community service including removing invasive weeds (see photos below), or picking up trash. These hands-on actions are designed to correlate with grade appropriate content standards for 4th-5th-6th grade. See 3 below 3. Curriculum that is aligned to the content standards for California public schools adopted by the State Board of Education, including, but not limited to, the Next Generation Science standards, or the California History-Social Science Standards.

All of the programs of BSLT and HSP are stewardship and community engagement oriented. Participants have engaged in litter cleanup and invasive removal since our programs began. It has just started to rain in our area and on Saturday, Nov 18, HSP presented a program on uses of indigenous plants and then participants planted local native plants along Natividad Creek. We are expecting that HSP school programs will be planting native plants on field trips to the Creeks of Salinas and to dune areas on Salinas River State Beach. HSP provides native plants for BSLT programs at Carr Lake.

In the last year, we were able to achieve several educational goals through a variety of activities. We were able to teach engineering skills through our summer camp where we partnered with Bike Lab, by teaching kids how to build and fix their own bikes. Our partnership with Soil Born provides scientific education on the importance of keeping our rivers clean to protect the environment. We were also able to provide education in arts through a variety of art-based projects as well as the viewing of historical art pieces at Indian Grinding Rock State Park. We also had the opportunity to teach science in many ways through our cave exploration trips and camping trips. During these outings, we discussed how various rock features are formed, learned about local wildlife and plat life, and were able to take useful outdoor skills and apply them during our camping trips.

This grant funded project has brought together 3 partners (Habitat Stewardship Project-HSP, Big Sur Land Trust-BSLT and Center for Community Advocacy-CCA) each with unique organizational goals, internal ways of operating, and rotating staffing issues. The first half of the year entailed a lot of planning and community outreach i.e.., with families and with school districts. Our first gathering at our Community Home Base on July 16, 2023 allowed our partners to work together and brought neighbors and families together to hear about our offerings, and then we were off with "Word of Mouth" coupled with "Door-to-Door" outreach being most successful.

Although we have not developed any new partnerships in the last year, we continue to foster our previous partnerships with Bike Lab and Soil Born Farms. This has been accomplished through the continuation of our Recreate for Health Summer Camp, Community Bike Repair days, and through our participation in Creek Week Cleanup. We continue to use these partnerships to create community service opportunities for TAG participants, as well as educational activities that foster an appreciation for health and the outdoors.

So far this has been an excellent experience for the three partner programs funded by OEP. Knowing what you want in regards to reporting is very valuable, as now we know what kind of images formats to save. Ie., one of our partners sent their images on a Word document so those images had to be resent. Another sent a video file which again is not in the format you wished. 

This past year, we have worked hard to organize the program more optimally with better marketing, well-structured meetings that include educational team-building activities, more thorough communication with members and their parents, and by planning activities further in advance. We have also begun to standardize timelines for when activities are promoted vs. when they become available to sign-up for. This helps to keep everyone on the same page and has created a better process for participants to sign-up for and join activities. Making these changes has had a major positive impact on the program, which has led to a 40% increase in memberships since November of 2023. Since these changes have been implemented, every activity we have done has been at 100% capacity.