The first Educational Goal was accomplished (Instruction in arts, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics that connects the nature experiences, or environmental stewardship.). We tailored our youth nature clubs curriculum on plants, seeds, birds, bugs, soil, insects, butterflies, flowers and native pollinators to enable age-appropriate nature experiences with art, science and environmental stewardship. We used mathematics and technology to facilitate the lesson plans with microscopes, ipads, and textbooks. We also incorporated environmental stewardship in ALL of our field trips.

EDUCATIONAL Instruction in arts, science, technology, & engineering. We include intercurricular education of garden learning into daily classes and conduct weekly garden instruction. Healthy lifestyles & sound nutritional habits. We demonstrate how to incorporate and prepare the food we grow. Staff model what they eat. We engage the community in the distribution of recovered food before it can end up in the landfill, leading to adding healthy organic foods families take home (free of charge) and add to meal planning. Community outreach methods and civic engagement related to ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE. We are developing career pathways in a program with our older kids, bringing in people who have a variety of green jobs, and working to develop worms and worm castings as a green job training program.

RocEra partnership for field trips: tour 5 chosen nature trips were a huge hit with the kids in this group. We learned to tailor the age group of each of the trips more tightly than we had originally expected. For example, we found it best to tailor each trip to ONE of these three age groups: kids 3-6; kids 7-12; teens 13+ and not mix all the ages groups together in one trip. 

RocEra and Children Mending Hearts partnerships for Youth Nature Club meetings: These partnerships were very good and our regular youth nature club meetings were much more successful than we had anticipated and the meetings became more and more popular as time went on, with many kids asking if we could come back sooner! We learned that afterschool meetings every week were better for our families than monthly saturday nature club meetings, so we amended our schedule to accomodate this. We also learned that summer programming was virtually impossible, as kids had camps and summer programs that kept them from coming to any of our nature club meetings. In the future, should we do nature clubs in the summer, we would structure it like a Nature Camp and run it for a full week for kids in the community. 

Watts Empowerment Center partnership for our Unity Days: This partnership helped make our Unity days a success. The WEC is located next to our garden and we learned that we could attract a larger crowd of kids of all ages to our gardens on the Unity Days. We learned that the best Unity days in our garden were not on weekends, as we had done in the past, but at afterschool times for 2 hours before dinner time.

Elkhorn Ranch: Elkhorn Slough wildlife & ranch life during future overnights. Oakland Goes Outdoors (OGO) and Oakland Unified School District: Prescott ES and W. Oakland MS trips. OGO helps with the cost of trips that align with OEP's. Allensworth Progressive Association (APA) joins Friends of Allensworth enriching Colonel Allensworth State Historic Park trips, leading to a grant application to pilot studies at San Diego, Oakland, & Allensworth on air quality, agriculture, & cultural connections among land stewards. With Port of Oakland's "Port of Oakland Harbor Tour," boat trips begin in Spring. 3rd Saturdays: W. Oakland Environ. Indicators Project, UCDavis, City of Oakland, Merritt College, UCBerkeley, Oak Ctr Preschool, UC Cooperative Extension. StopWaste's Reduce Reuse Recycle instructs parents, community in environmental care. We join a grant with Green the Church's faith community to plant trees, steward the earth. Hyphae Environmental Labs teach air quality testing, tree canopy.

Successful methods: Including community members in the planning process. Partnering with an organization with expertise in a specific program component. Being flexible with the time we facilitate engagements with youth and community members. 

Our success in hosting well-organized, well-planned, engaging events with food, music, BIPOC speaking on what they do, and outreach to, inclusion of, BIPOC community. School parents join in education, hands-on work, food distribution if we have informative speakers, engaged staff. Allensworth Trips: teachers tie trips to classroom learning. Future trips: boat trip and hiking on Angel Island to conduct an immigration study; a humanities class to Allensworth. As partner Golden Gate Bird Alliance’s funding situation shifts, we learned our capacity to accomplish trips continues, but is affected other’s changing circumstances. Challenge: managing so funds are in-hand when needed. Partners (OGO, East Bay Regional Trans., Port of Oakland’s Boat Trips) contribute to field trips that align with OEP trips and helps fulfill deliverables. Advanced transportation funds are covered when GEF is due, leaving unspent funds needed for staff. Could CV, OEP, and partners formulate a plan to benefit all?