Bay Restoration: Youth Engagement and Service Learning in East Oakland
Garretson Point Staging Area, Martin Luther King Jr. Regional Shoreline, Oakland, Alameda County; Measure AA Region: East Bay.
Safe, Clean Water and Pollution Prevention Program; Vital Fish, Bird and Wildlife Habitat Program
Sogorea Te’ Land Trust, Save The Bay and the East Bay Regional Park District
2023 UPDATE: Planting Justice, in partnership with the Sogorea Te' Land Trust, has developed a new curriculum for use on the youth internship element of the project. Planting Justice has recruited 18 East Oakland youth for enrollment in the internship. The aforementioned curriculum is now in use by both youth interns as well as community members to improve their understanding of the shoreline in order to become better stewards. Youth interns will continue their work in FY 23/24 when they engage in a hands-on capstone project in partnership with Save the Bay.
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This Community Grant funds Planting Justice to carry out the Bay Restoration: Youth Engagement and Service Learning in East Oakland project which includes: 1) developing a curriculum for a series of ten training workshops for youth interns; 2) conducting the workshops using the curriculum to train approximately 20 youth interns in environmental justice issues and San Francisco Bay habitat restoration techniques; and 3) leading the interns in carrying out shoreline cleanup, invasive plant removal, and habitat restoration activities at the Martin Luther King Jr. Regional Shoreline in Alameda County.
The project will empower youth participants to develop a personal relationship with the watershed in which they live through educational and hands-on content. Planting Justice will partner with the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust, an urban Indigenous women-led land trust that facilitates the return of Indigenous land to Indigenous people, to develop curriculum centered on topics including Bay habitat restoration, native shoreline plant identification, plant propagation and revegetation, water conservation, local environmental justice issues, permaculture, land rematriation and its connection to bay shoreline restoration, and Bay Area Native American history. This curriculum will be delivered through a paid internship consisting of a 10-session series of workshops that engages up to 20 local youth between the ages of 13 and 24, from the surrounding community. Participants will learn how to identify, propagate, plant, maintain, and use native plants through hands-on activities that they will use in practice at the site selected for restoration work. Upon completion of the workshop series, the project will conclude with a capstone internship experience where interns will carry out enhancement and restoration activities and one final educational activity over the course of two separate days at Save The Bay’s Martin Luther King Jr. Regional Shoreline Nursery.
