Parks for All Californians

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.

The educational goal of fostering stewardship of the environment was achieved in the Play in the Waves Activity which included the group open water swim and prior to the swim, a beach clean up. The President of OWO, Bryan Mineo, talked with the participants about the importance of cleaning the beach and keeping the ocean clean not only for swimmer safety but for the wildlife in the ocean. The participants also shared why they thought cleaning the beaches and the ocean was important to the environment. Bryan and Coach Pecot also talked about the importance of keeping their neighborhoods and the streets in their community litter free because any trash that got into the storm drains would go into the rivers which flowed to the ocean. During the beach clean up the participants discussed how plastic straws which were found could harm fish and other wildlife. One of the high school students shared that she was thinking about how important it was to encourage family to recycle plastic so it didn't end up in the ocean. This was an example of how the discussion and the clean up could encourage participants to share with their family and friends about how they could make changes like recycling to impact the environment.

Revolution Aquatics Accomplishments: Algin Sutton to strengthen participants swim skills and confidence so they can swim with confidence in the ocean and be ready for surf camp.

Lessons Learned: Personal funds were used to pay for pool rental fees and his staff for swim activity days at Algin Sutton. One With the Ocean had communicated to Coach that the grant would pay for the program cost. The gap in communication though had prevented grant staff from including Rev Aquatics costs in the advance request which could have increased available funds and helped with cash flow.

One unforeseen challenge for OWO was getting the Worker's Compensation insurance. Because of the group's activity of providing group open water swims, OWO couldn't use its own insurer to provide insurance and ultimately found no private insurers could provide coverage. OWO finally was insured by the State Worker's Insurance Fund but the time it took to do the initial research caused some delay. Also the premium for worker's compensation insurance was much higher than anticipated which exacerbated cash flow issues OWO was experiencing because foundational funding had started to decrease because of the pandemic. All of these early issues caused a delay in programming and also as mentioned in question 4 a loss in confidence from one of our partners.

Another unforeseen challenge is gaining trust in the community (parents) to bring their kids to the swim program at Algin Sutton to increase the number of participants. We believe that the outreach for the program needs to be done from someone who is part of the community to gain that trust. A solution is to hire a program coordinator from the community to provide the outreach needed to increase the number of participants. Although we did not include that in the budget, we would like to allocate our funds for a program coordinator from the area.

Other Program Goals

Service Learning/Career Pathway/Leadership Opportunities

Partnerships

Mentoring

Annual Reports Start in December 2023!

Grantee will report the number of children served, partnership accomplishments and lessons learned, how educational goals were achieved, and unforeseen challenges and recommended solutions, with the goal of inspiring and building capacity for future outdoor program providers throughout California.