The Rose Foundation was pleased to learn that our New Voices Are Rising program earned a grant through the California Natural Resources Agency’s Urban Greening Grant Program to green the Academy’s campus! We’ve drafted a plan to plant 48 trees on the Coliseum College Prep Academy campus and break up and remove pavement to let the soil breathe.
Astronomers will tell you how unique and priceless Earth’s breathable atmosphere seems when looking at the toxic clouds on Venus or the nearly airless deserts of Mars, but most Bay Area residents who on most days enjoy clear skies hadn’t reflected on the value of the air they breathe until the Northern California fires filled the region with smoke.
Are you committed to environmental stewardship and social justice? Are you detail-oriented, comfortable multi-tasking, confident with data entry and data management, and willing to learn new applications and software? If the answer is “yes” then you should apply to join our close-knit team as a grants assistant!
“Here’s how we get the fifth graders to pay attention.” Kneeling on the dunes in a clump of native buckwheat, our guide coaxed a fat red ant onto her fingers, popped it between her teeth and quickly bit it in half. Grinning back at us, she offered the rest of us our own ant to try…
This World Rivers Day, September 24, the Rose Foundation reflected on the value of rivers, and our role in protecting these vital veins and arteries of our planet. In many ways California is on the leading edge when it comes to environmental protection, yet of the over 66,000 miles of assessed rivers in the state, over 90% are too degraded or polluted to meet state water quality standards.
Cleaning products are meant to remove dirt and germs from our homes, but often do so using toxic chemicals. We awarded the Instituto de Educación Popular del Sur de California (IDEPSCA) a $50,000 grant through our Consumer Products Fund to promote the use of greener cleaning products among Latino immigrant domestic workers.
Earlier in the year, our New Voices Are Rising students wrote letters to Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf asking for action on the issue of gentrification. Our students want to live in a clean and green Oakland, and also a city where residents aren’t displaced by development and rising rent prices.
Our students’ learning journey this summer has taken them to the American River, the Richmond refinery communities, and the EBMUD West Oakland wastewater treatment plant. Students also planted trees to provide shade for a local nursery school, met with legislators in Sacramento, and completed externships to gain work experiences with local environmental organizations.
Special thanks to ARTA River Trips for donating a rafting trip to the Rose Foundation and our New Voices students! Our work often centers on protecting our California rivers, but we rarely get a chance to jump right into them.
Last Wednesday 250 members of farm-working communities joined Californians for Pesticide Reform in Sacramento to call for a ban on the toxic pesticide chlorpyrifos. The EPA has failed to ban Chlorpyrifos despite extensive scientific evidence of its harmfulness, leaving it up to the state government to protect farmworkers from this dangerous chemical. CPR has petitioned Governor Jerry Brown with a letter supported by 167,000 signatures calling for a statewide banned on chlorpyrifos.
Share
Tweet
Email
Print
More...