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Youth Watershed Education
Grants
Background
The
City of San José Environmental Services Department has a vested
interest in conserving water and protecting our waterways. The Department
provides four major water-related services to the community:
- The San Jose/Santa Clara Water Pollution Control Plant, located in
Alviso, treats wastewater from homes and businesses in eight South Bay
cities.
- South Bay Water Recycling supplies treated wastewater for outdoor
landscaping and industrial uses.
- The municipal water system supplies water to the Evergreen, North
San José, Alviso, Coyote, and Edenvale communities.
- Environmental enforcement inspectors help prevent pollution by providing
education, outreach, and technical assistance to businesses and residents
and by enforcing federal, state, and local regulations regarding industrial
waste and stormwater runoff.
Purpose
Youth Watershed Education Grants are designed to promote
understanding and stewardship of the Santa Clara Basin Watershed among
South Bay youth (in grades K-12) by supporting innovative projects for
youth education, curriculum development, adoption and implementation of
published watershed-based curricula, and teacher/youth leader training.
Project development should address at least one of the following key concepts:
- We need to protect our watershed. After we finish
using water, it doesn't just go away. There are two main paths by which
our wastewater eventually goes to the Bay: (1) the storm drain system
that flows through neighborhood creeks and (2) the sanitary sewer system
that flows to the San Jose/Santa Clara Water Pollution Control Plant
for treatment. Both our creeks and the Bay are part of our watershed,
which provides us with benefits worth protecting. The way we use water
and chemicals impacts the health of our watershed. We're sending too
many pollutants to the Bay. We need to prevent pollution by properly
disposing of chemicals we commonly use (i.e. motor oil, pesticides,
and paint).
- The San Jose/Santa Clara Water Pollution Control Plant is
important. This state-of-the-art facility protects the Bay
by treating and cleaning about 100,000,000 gallons of wastewater each
day from homes and businesses in San José, Santa Clara, Milpitas,
Cupertino, Campbell, Los Gatos, Saratoga, and Monte Sereno. Most of
the treated water is released into the Alviso marshlands of the South
Bay as fresh water to support aquatic life. Some is piped back to the
community as recycled water for use in outdoor landscaping or in industry.
- Water conservation is important in the South Bay.
We're sending too much fresh water into the salt marshes, the habitat
of two endangered species (California clapper rail and salt marsh harvest
mouse). We need to live in harmony with our watershed, and we need to
save endangered species habitat by conserving water -- drought or no
drought. Recycled water is important resource and part of our water
supply future.
Goals
- To provide educators and youth leaders with resources to pursue age-appropriate,
watershed educational activities that encourage hands-on, interdisciplinary
learning.
- To foster creative and self-sustaining pilot projects that can later
be shared and replicated by a wider audience of youth educators.
- To encourage partnerships and collaborations among existing organizations
that promote stewardship of the Santa Clara Basin Watershed.
Funding Cycle
The City of San José, Environmental Services
Department has set aside up to $50,000 as a donor-advised fund with
the
Community Foundation Silicon Valley for the fiscal year July 2007 through
June 2008. Grant requests for watershed projects may range from $500
through
$5,000. Funds will be disbursed over the course of one grant cycle as
follows:
Grant Milestones
Applications
Due |
Awards Announced |
Project Begins |
October 19, 2007 |
December 14, 2007 |
January 7, 2008 |
Funding will be distributed only to the schools or nonprofit,
nonsectarian organizations with which the applicant/project manager is
affiliated - not to individuals.
Who May Apply
To be eligible for a Youth Watershed Grant, the applicant/project
manager should be an educator or youth leader affiliated with a school
or a charitable, nonprofit, nonsectarian organization (e.g., PTA or educational
foundation) serving youth in grades K-12 within the cities of San José,
Santa Clara, Milpitas, Cupertino, Campbell, Los Gatos, Saratoga, or Monte
Sereno.
The applicant/project manager or those involved in implementing
the project should have experience in at least one of the following areas:
(1) conducting hands-on environmental education activities for youth;
(2) implementing curricula or developing new curricular activities for
youth between the ages of 5 and 18; or (3) training educators or peers
in curricular activities.
What We Support
- Innovative classroom projects that promote understanding and stewardship
of the Santa Clara Basin Watershed
- Watershed action projects for youth
- Watershed-based curriculum implementation (existing or new), including
interdisciplinary approaches
- Watershed education training for educators (K-12) or youth activity
leaders
- Hands-on experience and involvement with the watershed as related
to curricular activities, such as field trips to local creeks or wetlands
What We Don't Support
- Purchase of supplies or equipment not related to watershed education
activities
- Costs of receptions
- Events where fund-raising is a primary purpose
- Deficit or debt reduction efforts
- Ongoing operational costs
- Project components already fully supported by the Watershed Management
Initiative's Water Action Fund funding
- Funding to individuals
- Program activities affiliated with a sectarian organization
- Program activities for youth outside the San Jose/Santa Clara Water
Pollution Control Plant Tributary Area (San Jose, Santa Clara, Campbell,
Cupertino, Los Gatos, Milpitas, Monte Sereno and Saratoga)
Funded Projects
Project Title |
Organization
& Project Description |
Amount |
BioSITE in the Classroom: Extending the Curriculum |
Beth Fensterwald, a technology resource teacher at Almaden
School in San José, who is using her $4,000 grant
to develop a classroom micro-science unit that complements the BioSITE
creek study program for 4th & 5th graders. |
$4,000 |
Investigating Our Watershed |
Rosana Cayabyab, a teacher at Wilcox High School
in Santa Clara, who is using a $3,800 grant award to engage English
language learners in field studies of Calabazas Creek to improve
their academic skills. |
$3,800 |
Wolverines Working for Watersheds |
Katy Zamudio, a math and Spanish teacher at Russell Middle
School in Milpitas, who applied her grant of $2,167 to
help the school environmental club start a verimcomposting program
to recycle lunch waste, plant trees and native plants on school
grounds, and take field trips to a recycling center and the Alviso
wetlands. |
$2,167 |
| Wild about Water |
Jeanne Kaliska, a 3rd grade teacher at Meadows
School in San José, is using grant funds to teach
students about animals and plants in local creeks and rivers though
field trips and water monitoring. |
$1,740 |
Following the Path of Our Watershed |
Laura Shaw, used grant monies to support watershed
field trips for third graders at Washington School
in San José as a component of an interdisciplinary approach
to watershed education. The culminating project was the production
of a bilingual book, Save Water and Keep it Clean. |
$1,673 |
Alviso Field Trip |
National Lao-American Community &
Economic Development, Inc., a nonprofit group that provides
cultural education to Lao-American youth, is using a grant funding
to transport students and their families to the marshlands in Alviso
to learn more about how their water use affects the South Bay habitat. |
$800 |
Union Community Watershed Documentary |
Susan Fernandes, a teacher at Union
Middle School in San José, used a grant award to
develop a multi-faceted approach to integrating watershed studies
in the 6th grade curriculum. Components included the creation of
a watershed model for the school's Science Fair Open House and an
online science journal for the school website. |
$5,000 |
Monitoring the Abiotic and Biotic Health of
Our Creek |
Brittany Elstroth, a science teacher at Del
Mar High School in San José, applied the grant toward
field trip transportation and water testing equipment to enable
senior biology students to apply their knowledge of earth science,
chemistry, physics and biology to assess the biotic and abiotic
health conditions of the Los Gatos Creek. |
$2,635 |
Studying Environmental Impacts along the Guadalupe |
Robert Iverson, Science Department Chair at
Gunderson High School in San José, is using
grant funds to enable students to learn how to use “real-world”
science techniques for water monitoring along the Guadalupe River
(i.e., using remote operated vehicles to and mapping data with GIS
software) and to present their results as a video documentary at
the Western Regional Environmental & Spatial Technology Conference. |
$5,000 |
How to Apply
Complete ALL three steps below:
Step 1: Return the completed
application, including Cover/Budget Form, Proof of Charitable Organization
Status, and answers to all Application
Questions, by 5 PM Friday, October 19, 2007. Both electronic files
and hard copies are required as noted in Steps 2 and 3.
Download
the 2007 Grant Application Questions and Cover Form (MS
Word format, 75 KB).
Date Due
|
Project Begins
|
October 19, 2007
|
January 7, 2008
|
Step 2: E-mail your completed Cover/Budget Form and answers to all Application
Questions (as either MS Word or pdf document attachments) to: tamara.gilbert@sanjoseca.gov
Step
3: Mail or hand-deliver 10 copies of the entire application package to:
City of San José — Environmental Services
Attention: Tamara Gilbert
200 E. Santa Clara Street, 10th Floor Tower
San José, CA 95113-1905
We encourage you to ask any questions you may have before
applying for a grant. Please direct your questions on Youth Watershed
Education Grants to:
Kara Novogradac
Phone: (408) 277-2807
Fax: (408) 277-5775
Email: kara.novogradac@sanjoseca.gov
Reporting Requirements
Grant recipients will be required to submit a final
report on the outcome of the implementation their grant project and grant
award expenditures.
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