Earthscope's Teen Media Program Engages Students in Mill Valley

For the third year in a row, Earthscope is bringing it's Teen Environmental Media program to Ms. Bruno's classroom at Tamalpais High School in Mill Valley. Students are in the process of learning about media and the environment. The  dozen or so student reporters will research, conduct interviews, write, and record their own stories which will air on KALW Public Radio in San Francisco and KWMR West Marin.

The class has already interviewed Dr. Nat Seavy (above) from PRBO Conservation Science about California's native bird species and how a well designed levy system can help protect precious habitat along with farming interests in the Central Valley. The students also recently took a trip to the school's outdoor garden (below) where they identified many vegetables, fruits, herbs and spices. They also learned about composting.

Keep following this blog for updates and stories from Ms. Bruno's class. For More information visit Earthscope Media 's website.

 EarthScope Media Intern Declan Katz interviewed Tom Boss of the Marin Bicycle Coalition.

 The Marin County Bicycle Coalition (MCBC) has been steadily improving our county’s road and path facilities for walkers and bikers since we formed in 1998. You’ve seen the impact of our advocacy efforts in each of our towns: permanent bike racks, bike lane striping, green-and-white bike route signs, road resurfacing, ‘sharrow’ road stencils, and so much more.

MCBC’s work improves our quality of life in many ways:

increased opportunities for daily physical activity,
teaching your children to be skilled and safe bike riders,
reduced road congestion and greenhouse gas emissions,
transportation equity for our low-income neighbors
Our goal is for 20% of all trips in Marin to be made by walking or bicycling by 2020.




Click this link to access the story:
https://www.box.com/s/lqwtsb1yo4ejvmlvbvvv

EarthScope Media Teen Reporter, Hailey Jurgens, Interviewed Noah Greenwald Endangered Species Director, of the Center for Biological Diversity.

The Center for Biological Diversity is racing to save the unique plants and animals that make up the diversity of life on this planet. Their campaigns to save species and wild places now reach beyond U.S. borders from the Antarctic to the North Pole and Asia to North Africa.
To help preserve biodiversity, the Center has:
• gained first-time protection, through scientific petitions and legal action, for more than 360 species under the Endangered Species Act, and helped hundreds more;
• secured protection for tens of thousands of river miles and more than 120 million acres of habitat for endangered species;
• defeated powerful attempts to gut the Endangered Species Act by supplying sound science and analysis to policymakers;
• reversed dozens of politically tainted decisions harming endangered plants and animals under the Bush administration;
• published groundbreaking scientific articles and comprehensive reports on subjects like species recovery and what federally protected habitat means for endangered species.


Noah Greenwald  directs the Center’s efforts to protect new species under the Endangered Species Act, to ensure that imperiled species receive effective protections and that we have the strongest Endangered Species Act possible.  He also works to educate the public about the importance of protecting biodiversity and about the multitude of threats to the survival of North American wildlife.  He holds a bachelor of science in ecology from the Evergreen State College and a master's in forest ecology and conservation from the University of Washington. Before he joined the Center in 1997, Noah worked as a field biologist, surveying northern spotted owls and marbled murrelets and banding Hawaiian songbirds.

https://www.box.com/s/rp67wqsh2wraoyk5do73

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Worldwide, it is estimated that on a single day women can spend over 200 billion collective hours fetching water. 1 in 10 girls drop out of school or miss one week per month when they start menstruating because of the lack of toilets. Additionally, women are responsible for the health of the household often adding financial stress when a family member falls ill if she must miss out on any income-generating opportunities not to mention having to buy medicines or pay for health services.

Because they are often in charge of procuring water for their families and communities, women have a much deeper relationship to this essential resource. Yet in many places around the world their knowledge and hard work is ignored when it comes to community decision-making around the provision of clean water and sanitation strategies. Women know the locations of all the available and seasonal water sources as well as which water sources are safest. Also, because they have more interaction with water than others, making sure they have access to information about proper hygiene practices, and the ability to implement them, is crucial to promoting family health. If a mother is cooking, cleaning and providing drinking water and not practicing good hygiene, the whole family is at risk. The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) recognizes that the “exclusion of women from the planning of water supply and sanitation schemes is a major cause of their high rate of failure.”

 

The Global Women’s Water Initiative was launched collaboratively in 2007 by three international organizations with shared goals and values: A Single Drop, Crabgrass and Women’s Earth Alliance. Since its launch, GWWI has facilitated 3 year-long training programs for 45 two-person teams of African women grassroots leaders, providing over $55,000 in seed funding for water and sanitation projects in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, South Africa, Ghana, Nigeria, Togo, Liberia, and Cameroon. The teams are selected through a rigorous application process; the selected duos are all respected leaders who have a proven track record in implementing programs in their local communities. GWWI has also built partnerships with strong regional organizations, including GROOTS Kenya, the Greenbelt Movement, ProNet Accra (Water Aid affiliate), and Women’s and Young People’s Leadership Academy (iCON) who have acted as our local hosts, coordinated local logistics and facilitated skill-building workshops. In addition to African women trainers and participants, Women and Water Trainings also include international women development practitioners and academics who participate as Fellows, providing post-training support to the African participants who are implementing water projects in their communities. 

Teen Reporters interviewed Gemma Bulous. 

Gemma Bulos is a multi award-winning Social Entrepreneur and Director of the Global Women’s Water Initiative. Prior to co-founding GWWI, Gemma was the Founding Director of A Single Drop for Safe Water in the Philippines, creating income-generating community-led water service organizations. For this innovation, Gemma received national and international social entrepreneur awards including Echoing Green, Ernst Young and Schwab Foundation. Her programs also won accolades including the Tech Museum Tech Equality Award and Warriors of the UN Millennium Goals, sponsored by Kodak Philippines. In 2011, she was recognized as one of the Most Influential Thought Leaders and Innovative Filipinas in the United States by Filipina Women's Network. She has presented alongside such dignitaries such as Jane Goodall, Vandana Shiva, Wangari Maathai at events such as the World Economic Forum, UN Water for Life Conference and others. Gemma is also the recipient of the CG Vibes Award from Queen Latifah and CoverGirl for “Women Changing the World Through Music” for building the Million Voice Choir global peace movement to raise awareness of the global water crisis.

 

For over a decade EarthScope Media and the Teen Environmental Media Training Program has been providing vocational training to high school students.
 

We provide them with hands on vocational training in journalism, communications and cutting editing technology. We offered paid internships to two graduates who served as mentors for new students and as roving reporters.

We additionally provided curriculum to enhance oral and written English for English Language Learners. We helped students gain knowledge about science, environmental and sustainability and health issues first hand directly from the leaders in these fields. All of our students completed their own radio story. Every student learned the tenants of good journalism, conducted research, wrote questions, interviewed leaders in the community, developed a media script, recorded their scripts, learned how to use sound editing software (used in film, radio and the music business), and completed radio ready stories in their own voices.  Some students also wrote press releases, articles and blogs, and learned how to use Social Media.

 In addition our program benefited:

 Our Community & The Public At Large:

Þ   By Providing News about crucial environmental and sustainability issues of the day

Þ   By Creating an Informed Public

Þ   By offering a call to action and/or follow up source

Þ   By Supporting Democracy by informing the public with news that is not compromised by commercial interests or advertisers.

The Environment:

Þ   By Promoting Environmental Stewardship

Þ   By Informing, educating and announcing environmental actions - organizations

Þ   By Plat forming Alternatives to harmful industrial practices- Bio-mimicry, Marin Clean Energy

Þ   By Educating & Informing and Connecting the Younger Generation about Environmental, Health and Sustainability Issues

Þ  By providing a Doorway to Green Careers.

We could not have done any of this without support from our long term partners including Marin County School to Career Program and KALW Radio.

We also could not have done this without the support of our funders:

The Fullerton Family Foundation

Good Earth

Susan Adams and others...:)

Many thanks for their support:)