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Bay Area
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MLK Day of Service |
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On Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, the Student Conservation Association will lead a work party of about 50 youth volunteers, primarily from the East Bay in an urban community-based conservation service project at the Alameda Point Collaborative (APC) in Alameda.
Both SCA and resident APC youths will team up and work together to expand an existing organic community garden. Students will construct planter boxes, spread mulch, and enlarge the availability of growing ground for the garden. Students will also be planting fruit trees, building a chicken coup, and planting potatoes and other crops.
Alameda Point Collaborative residents and staff, alongside SCA leaders, will lead the projects. At 10am, the volunteers will arrive in a special biodiesel school bus. APC staff will greet them, lead them on a tour of the community buildings, and get them started in the garden. At noon, the APC will make a lunchtime presentation on food justice and the relationship between local food preparation and society. After lunch, students will continue working in the garden until 3pm.
If interested, please contact
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or call (510) 832-1966 x306
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Apply to join our Conservation Leadership Corps! |
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If you live in the SF Bay Area and are between the ages of 15-17, apply to join our Conservation Leadership Corps!
As a member of a Conservation Leadership Corps (CLC) you will:
- Volunteer one weekend a month throughout the school year, building trails, planting native plants or pulling invasive vegetation, and working on a variety of other outdoor projects
- Go camping and hiking in the great outdoors
- Attend one or two evening meetings a month to plan upcoming trips and learn about your environment
- Meet and work closely with other motivated youth in your community
- Be eligible to receive a free sleeping bag, camping pad, water bottle and tshirt!
- Have the opportunity to join an SCA summer volunteer crew in a national or regional park away from home during the summer, all expenses paid!
We typically accept applications in September and October each year. To apply, contact the SCA California/Southwest office at 510-832-1966 x304 or click here for an application.
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Teaching Children the Value of Wetlands |
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Every morning Allison Shealy drives to her office at the Don Edwards San Francisco Bay Wildlife Refuge Environmental Education Center in the middle of an expansive and beautiful wetland in Alviso. What’s striking is the quiet peace of the wetland surrounded by various manifestations of civilization: white, square industry buildings, a water treatment facility, a housing complex and the soft, steady roar of highway 880.
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Digging into the History of the Presidio |
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 My visit with SCA intern Tracy Roosevelt at the Presidio in San Francisco included a personal tour of the old military base, turned into a National Park in 1994. Zooming along at 10 mph in a small electric vehicle, Tracy showed me the old officer’s club from the 1700s when the Spanish Conquistadores first discovered the land that is now the Presidio, the site where a passionate love affair was tragically ended one night when the house of a general overseas burned down with his wife and two children, and the very office where Lt. General Dewitt signed the papers that authorized the internment of Japanese Americans in California during WWII.
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A True Nature Lover |
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 Andrew Sutherland, of Albany, wanted a true outdoors experience from his SCA crew this summer. His number one preference was to be in the backcountry, somewhere in the US, in the middle of nowhere. He found himself in the backcountry of the Rocky Mountains for four weeks and said the experience was “awesome.”
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Fresh Eggs, Strawberries, and Maple Syrup |
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 When I talked to Amy Yee, 15, a little over a month ago, the thing she was most nervous about for her month long crew was the plane ride there. After her trip, when I asked her how the plane ride went, she hardly remembered that she had ever been nervous.
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Chris Cheng Learns about the Complexity of Conservation |
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Chris Cheng, 17, just returned home to El Cerrito from three weeks in Dinosaur National Monument, Colorado. This beautiful park is best known for its dinosaur fossil collection in the Dinosaur Quarry, but what Chris and his crew did this summer had to do with a modern kind of beast…
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Connecting with Land and People |
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 “One morning we woke up early and drove to the highest point in the forest. It was a clear morning and we all sat on a ledge and watched the sun rise. It was so peaceful, quiet and intense.” This is Willy Zhang’s best memory from her SCA crew last summer in the George Washington and Jefferson National Forest in Virginia.
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From the Hum of the City to the Hum of the Crickets |
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 July 9, 2006. Veronica Harvey, 17, lives just on the outskirts of the busiest downtown part of San Francisco. Joining the Conservation Leadership Corps gave Veronica her first experience with being in nature for an extended period of time.
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SCA Helps Lani Rosenthal Find her Passion |
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June 29, 2006. By the end of this summer, Lani Rosenthal’s high school career will have included a good dosage of SCA. Lani, 17, graduated Berkeley High School this year and completed her second year with the Conservation Leadership Corps.
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A Leader Emerges From CLC |
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 June 23rd, 2006. When I asked Marquise Usher what his favorite part about CLC was, he answered without hesitation: “The people. There’s just so much camaraderie and we all get along.” His profile, hanging on the CLC students wall in the Oakland SCA office, declares under the question: Is there anything else we should know about you?: “I love this group to death!”
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High School