After a long dry spell, the state has been blessed with much-needed rain to recharge our aquifers and get our creeks flowing again. The Watershed Project is so grateful for our faithful supporters who help us do the work we do. We have already received over $5,500 in donations this month and our first ever online silent auction raised over $2,300~a big thank you to all who participated! But we still have a long way to go to achieve our goal of $30,000 by the end of the year.
Each year we bring hundreds of students to regional parks and other areas around the Bay Area. Some of these students are seeing the bay shoreline or a redwood tree for the first time. We count on donations from individuals to pay for buses for field trips, boots for exploring the creek and shoreline, and binoculars for observing birds and other wildlife in their natural habitat. Your gift of $1,000 will cover the transportation costs to Tomales Bay.
Our Green Collar Corps and high school intern programs provide youth aged 16-25 with hands-on experience in planting and maintaining our bioswales, trees, and habitat and rain gardens. With their help, we planted 50 trees and 5 habitat gardens in North Richmond this year! They also helped us install irrigation on the Richmond Greenway and led volunteers in weeding, mulching, and planting our bioswales and habitat gardens. The Watershed Project relies on our energetic youth to maintain our growing number of green infrastructure projects, and we rely on your support to bring these opportunities to them.
Our youth have also been instrumental in recruiting and training a network of water quality monitors, many of whom are themselves high school and college students. The Watershed Project is proud of its work in mobilizing citizen scientists to help us gather high quality data on the health of our creeks and shorelines during monitoring and cleanup events. Please help us continue to offer quality hands-on training in environmental stewardship, community outreach and volunteer coordination. Help us take the pulse of our creeks and shorelines with your gift today.
Thank you for your support and happy holidays,
Juliana Gonzalez
P.S. Hot off the press! Check out our annual report for details about our accomplishments.