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The Watershed Project

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Getting My Feet Wet | Reflecting on My AmeriCorps Internship

By Ashlee Johnson

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This time last year, I found myself fresh out of college. I was eager to join the environmental work field, but I was worried I would have to say, “sayonara” to the degree I had just earned and, “hello” to making endless copies and coffee runs. When I received my acceptance to work as an AmeriCorps member with The Watershed Project in August, I could only imagine how my year of service would allow me to take my degree to the next level.

As an environmental education intern, I was immersed in teaching curriculum that ranged from creeks and pollution, to marshes and native oyster restoration. The Watershed Project’s creative environmental K-12 curriculum strengthened my teaching skills while also expanding my overall knowledge and understanding of environmental concepts. The Watershed Project’s education programming helped me get my feet wet, figuratively and literally! When I wasn’t teaching in the classroom, I was tromping around Tomales Bay with high schoolers and exploring marshes with elementary school students. But more importantly, I was also given the chance to connect with and learn from many students who came from unique and diverse backgrounds. ashleeteach

The culture at The Watershed Project is about inspiring communities to appreciate their local environment through valuable experiences, like large outreach events. Coordinating and participating in Coastal Cleanup Day, Earth Day, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service allowed me to share my passion for environmental stewardship with community members, and provide them with a glimpse of how I am hoping to restore the natural wonder of the San Francisco Bay one family and community at a time.

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As I reflect on this past year, a comment comes back to me that was made during my AmeriCorps orientation. It was said that our year of service would significantly impact our lives in ways we couldn’t even imagine yet. Interning with The Watershed Project was just that and will always be a place that provided me with a strong set of skills, while opening my eyes to many inspirational communities and people. Everyone deserves the chance to be exposed to the beauty our planet has to offer and the chance to feel empowered to protect it. Interning at The Watershed Project gave me the opportunity to help make this chance possible for communities throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.

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Growing Roots in Richmond | Trees Thrive Thanks to Interns

By Femke Oldham


Richmond is about to get greener thanks to the help of Andrew Whitmore and TyJohn Sykes. These two young men have been learning to plant and care for trees–and it’s no small job. The Watershed Project hired Andrew, 22, and TyJohn, 20, to help carry out our new Rain to Roots program: an effort to install 200 trees and rainwater detention areas in the Iron Triangle and Santa Fe neighborhoods of Richmond.

Both full-time students on top of their tree care responsibilities, Andrew and TJ are quite busy these days and I was lucky to catch them for a brief interview before they headed out to the Richmond Greenway to check on the ‘roots’ of their labor…

TWP: Where are you from?
TyJohn: Richmond
Andrew: I’m originally from Hayward, but now I live in Richmond.

TWP: How do you spend your time outside of interning with The Watershed Project?
TJ: I study psychology at Laney College.
A: I study graphic design at the Academy of Art in San Francisco.

TWP: What do you do as an intern on the Rain to Roots program?
A: We mostly focus on tree planting and outreach. So far we have done two volunteer tree planting events and a few outreach events. For outreach, we attend neighborhood meetings and pass out flyers and give a bit of information about the program and how people can get free trees.


TWP: Why did you apply for this job?
TJ: It just fit. I felt like it was something new and interesting. I have never planted trees and wanted to do something good for the community. I feel we are building a better community in the Iron Triangle and Santa Fe neighborhoods.



TWP: What’s next for you?
A: After the internship, I would love to come back and do more graphic work for TWP. In the long term I want to open my own graphic design firm with a couple friends.
TJ: I want to be a probation officer or perhaps a child therapist.

TWP: What is your favorite place to be outside?
TJ: Any marina.
A: I like to spend time at Miller Knox and Point Richmond and sometimes I jog around Lake Merritt.

If you’d like to learn more about the Rain to Roots program, contact program manager Ricardo da Cruz e Sousa at ricardo@thewatershedproject.org.

Top photo is Andrew, middle photo is TJ, and bottom photo is both interns with program manager Ricardo.

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Long, Lost Love for Our (Plastic) Ocean | An Intern’s Take on Coastal Cleanup Day


By Vanessa Gayton

Recently while reading a book titled Plastic Ocean, I had a sudden flashback to one of my childhood dreams to be a marine biologist. I often told my parents that I wanted to heal the ocean and the animals living there, never really understanding just how hard that task night be. This flashback got me thinking about the path I have taken to become a Healthy Watersheds Intern at The Watershed Project, and also about how my work now is not far from my lofty childhood plans.


It started with a move from Los Angeles to the Bay Area to attend California State University, East Bay in Hayward. I immediately began working at the campus bookstore and was linked in to many new opportunities for professional and academic growth. One of these opportunities was the Community Service Scholarship Program (CSSP) offered through my school. CSSP gives financial stipends to 13 CSUEB students to demonstrate their commitment to community service at local non-profit agencies by serving 100 hours in supervised summer internships. I applied and was thrilled when I was offered the chance to participate.

Since my move to the Bay Area, I have also become more of a nature enthusiast. I’ve been amazed by the beauty of the plants and landscapes of this part of California. So, when it came time to choose what type of non-profit agency I’d like to work for, I jumped at the chance to intern with The Watershed Project. My position at TWP is an opportunity to gain experience while working to restore our precious water resources through community action and education. It has been a perfect fit for me!


My major project as an intern is to help plan for International Coastal Cleanup Day, which I found out is the largest volunteer events on the planet! To think that hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world join together to help fight marine debris is amazing to me. Last year, California led the nation with the most volunteers (82,500) who removed over 1,200,000 pounds of trash! These numbers are astounding, but also sad. While it is fantastic that so many individuals can join together to help our planet, it is also disturbing that we have let that much debris escape into our watersheds, onto our shorelines, and the ocean itself.

Part of The Watershed Project’s mission is to help people like you and me understand, appreciate, and protect our local watersheds. Coastal Cleanup Day is an excellent opportunity to open people’s eyes to the fact that what happens on land may eventually end up in our ocean. Individuals have a chance to come out to a local creek or shoreline, surrounded by friends and family, and join in our efforts to help save our ocean from more plastic debris. In addition to this, we also encourage individuals to take pledges to make small changes in their everyday lifestyles that can improve the health of our ocean.

On Saturday, September 15th, everyone is invited to come join us in our efforts to help rid our creeks and shorelines of unwanted plastics and debris, and help make them beautiful and healthy for everyone to enjoy! The Watershed Project will be hosting a cleanup site located at Shimada Friendship Park on the Richmond Shoreline, with a delicious BBQ planned after the event hosted by Supervisor John Gioia. We will also have a site at the Albany Bulb, as well as many other sites in the Contra Costa County area. For more information and to find a site near you, please visit our Coastal Cleanup Day 2012 webpage. I hope to see you there!

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Where Are They Now? | Greetings from a Former Intern


By Madeleine Foote

“It tastes like a little bite of the ocean,” said Linda Hunter as she tried to convince me to try an oyster for the first time. The logic was that if I was going to work so hard in their name, I should at least know what oysters taste like. So on a sunny day outside The Watershed Project’s headquarters on the Richmond Field Station, surrounded by coworkers I had come to respect and admire –and when I wasn’t able to stall any longer– I took a deep breath and slurped down my first oyster. It was sustainably harvested from Pickleweed Point Oyster Co. just a few hours before. My first bivalve was delicious, and marks one of my fondest memories of my time at The Watershed Project.


I joined The Watershed Project in July of 2009 as part of their burgeoning internship program, hoping to confirm my recent decision to pursue a career in the environmental field. As the development intern, my main task was to organize events to raise money while also increasing awareness of The Watershed Project and its mission– a lofty goal, indeed. To achieve my internship goals, I organized the first annual Bubbles & Bivalves event, a venue for attendees to learn about our unique San Francisco Bay watershed while enjoying the best of the Bay Area’s sustainable restaurants and wineries. From this planning process, I learned the basics of budgeting, refined my organizational skills, and became skilled at the art of persuasion, aka “professional begging.”

With the third Bubbles & Bivalves event coming up this May 17th, I feel honored that I was able to contribute to something that is a long-lasting benefit for The Watershed Project, its Living Shoreline Program, and for the vitally important native oysters.


My internship cemented my desire to contribute to the betterment of our environment. I left The Watershed Project to pursue my Master of Environmental Management degree at the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University. I plan to graduate this coming May. Although my focus has shifted towards a desire to work on domestic climate change policy, the skills and passion for environmental issues that I gained from my time at The Watershed Project have proved useful in my life as a graduate student. I’ve had many wonderful opportunities at Duke, including my role as the Nicholas School Student Council Co-Director, (in which my organizational skills and experience with event planning have come in very handy). Last summer I worked as a policy and lobbying intern in Washington, DC, and plan to return to the Capitol to work on environmental policy through advocacy and lobbying.

I believe my role in the future is to push for a national strategy to tackle climate change, which threatens the San Francisco Bay that I, The Watershed Project, and all those in the Bay Area love so dearly. I am truly grateful to The Watershed Project for giving me the chance to get my feet wet in the environmental realm, and for convincing me of the joys of an oyster– a little bite of the Bay.

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My First Watershed Project Workshop | An Intern Tells All


By Ken Schwab

Recently I traveled to San Francisco to join educators, professionals, and community members at a workshop presented by The Watershed Project whose focus was using award-winning teaching tools to bring awareness of healthy watersheds to our youth. Since I am new to the project, I wasn’t sure what to expect.

We met on the 5th of November at the Alice Fong Yu Elementary School in San Francisco. I was pleasantly greeted by The Watershed Project’s Public Programs Manager Martha Berthelsen, Education Coordinator Katy Brogan, and AmeriCorps Intern Diana Dunn. After chatting with these workshop leaders, I drifted over to a row of tables with displays, maps, field guides, a course reader, and many other watershed-related materials. “How cool is this?” I thought. The collection captured an array of topics that included local plant and vegetation, animal and marine life, how urban development and culture are shaping the planet, and opportunities to become involved in restoration.


As I was mingling before the workshop, the depth and breadth of teaching experience and expertise among fellow workshop participants struck me. I could tell that I was going to walk away from this workshop a better educator.

The core objective of the workshop was to take participants on a journey from mountaintop to upland habitats, creek ecology, marshes and marine debris. The first activity we learned was “Watershed in Your Hand”– a clever approach for kids to get a sense of how the dynamics of climate interact with watersheds. The class started by crumpling a piece of paper into a ball. As we carefully unraveled the ball, the terrain of our paper watersheds emerged. We marked the soil on the mountaintops, water in creeks, and urban development using colored markers. Then came the rain. In place of Mother Nature, we used squirt bottles and dowsed our watersheds with water. As the water flowed from the crumpled peaks to valleys of the paper, the colors blended together, demonstrating the interconnectedness of our waterways, homes, and environment.


The tour of the garden was remarkable. The school’s garden coordinator spoke of how students were eager to become involved even during recess. She also pointed out a shiny new rainwater harvesting system installed by The Watershed Project. Taking a moment, I began to appreciate the possibilities of watershed awareness projects in dense urban areas.

When it came time for lunch, we were surprised and thrilled to be provided with a delicious, home-cooked meal that was prepared and delivered by Executive Director Linda Hunter.

One section of the afternoon session exposed us to the Living Shoreline Initiative headed by Christopher Lim of The Watershed Project. He discussed the initial steps being taken to restore the native oyster population in the San Francisco Bay. I was amazed at the efforts currently underway to restore underwater ecosystems. He also emphasized the educational offerings, including free field trips for high school students!

At the end of the day, I walked away with an experience that was educational, entertaining, inspiring. I can’t wait to continue to get my hands wet in the world of environmental education.

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