CommUniverCity: Growing Sustainably

The Authority helped to fund Veggielution’s Eastside Explorers, an experiential, hands-on field trip program which engages hundreds of middle school students each year. Field trip activities are centered around collaborative group tasks focused on urban agriculture, nutrition, human impacts, and ecological interconnections. Veggielution's historical location in East San José encourages discovery while pushing students and teachers to develop a sense of teamwork and fostering a strong sense of place.

The City of Santa Clara Parks and Recreation Department is facilitating a range of sustainable container gardening educational workshops that enhance gardening opportunities for all and furthering its goals to cultivate urban biodiversity and equity for the community. Container gardening is a form of gardening in which plants are grown in containers such as pots, planters, or raised beds, rather than in the ground. Container gardens are moveable and easily adaptable to many locations. This method of gardening can be used in a variety of settings, including small balconies, patios, and decks.

The Authority’s grant helped fund Living Classroom’s Garden-Based Instruction in the Campbell School District. Living Classroom's environmental education program focuses in three key areas: environmental literacy, connection to healthy food, and science learning that is relevant and real to the lives of students. Living Classroom will provide a full-service program to schools, including lesson instruction to hundreds of classrooms with multiple lessons for each class each year over multiple years, lesson materials, garden installation and maintenance, and recruitment and training of volunteer parents and docents. The goal of the Authority-funded portion the program was to provide top quality, engaging garden-based learning experiences in the areas of science, nutrition, math, and social studies for at least 1,200 K-3 students at five Campbell schools