The Community Wetland Restoration Grants Program (funded by Earth Island Institute: see Earth Island Institute’s restoration initiatives website at: http://restoration.earthisland.org/) provides funding for community-based restoration projects in coastal wetlands and watersheds in the region. The purpose of the program is to further the goals of the WRP Regional Strategy; build local
capacity to plan and implement wetland restoration projects; promote community involvement in wetlands restoration activities; and foster education about wetlands ecosystems. Since 2002, the program has been funded by Earth Island Institute. It is administered by Environment Now, a non-profit group located in Santa Monica.
Each January the WRP solicits proposals for the Community Wetland Restoration Grants Program. Nonprofit organizations and local agencies are eligible to apply. Proposals are reviewed by a committee that includes a representative from each of the five county task forces. Typically projects are selected and can begin receiving funds by early summer.
For more information, contact Shawn Kelly, WRP Grants Administrator at (805) 984-9531 or at skelly@scwrp.org.
Why is it so critical to get our youth involved in hands-on restoration activities? David Sobel, co-director of the Center for Place-based Education at Antioch's New England Graduate School has found that an emphasis on environmental doom and gloom too early “ends up distancing children from, rather than connecting them with, the natural world.” Emotionally, they turn off – particularly because they have so little experience in nature; they learn that more than 10,000 acres of rain forest will be cut down in the rain forest during their morning at school, but usually not about their own region's forests or the meadow outside their classroom.
While young people do need to know about ecological deterioration at some point, they also need to hear a broader, more optimistic message about creating the future, and they need to get outdoors more. In surveys of environmental leaders, most “attributed their commitment to a combination of two sources: many hours spent outdoors in a keenly remembered wild or semi-wild place in childhood or adolescence, and an adult who taught respect for nature,” according to Louise Chawla, environmental psychologist and international coordinator of the Growing Up in Cities program of UNESCO.
A more recent study by researchers at Cornell University revealed that “wild” nature play before age 11 fosters adult environmentalism. “When children become truly engaged with the natural world at a young age, the experience is likely to stay with them in a powerful way – shaping their subsequent environmental path,” reports environmental psychologist Nancy Wells. If coming generations spend less and less time outdoors, where will the future stewards of the earth come from?
