Hello TWP Friends and Supporters,
What a difference a year makes! In contrast to last year-end, when I was writing to you about the pandemic’s harsh impacts on our communities, fiscal year 2021-2022 has seen The Watershed Project move back into full gear with our programming.
And 2022 is our 25th Anniversary year! I am so grateful to have seen so many friends at our party at Riggers Loft in Richmond in late June, Rock the Bay, helping us celebrate 25 years of accomplishments. Thank you.
As I look at the history of 25 years of The Watershed Project, I see the many faces of board members, staff, interns, partners, friends, and volunteers that have worked together to build a more resilient and livable community.
TWP inspires the optimists, the doers, the dreamers, the organizers, the teachers, the community scientists, the mentors to work together and bring others into the fold, to build a healthier and more resilient SF Bay Area.
Our mission remains to inspire communities to protect, appreciate and restore their local watershed. It’s an open invitation for everyone to work together to build a greener environment and to create the conditions for climate and community resiliency that can provide greater environmental equity and justice for the most vulnerable of our cities and neighborhoods.
Watersheds are the lenses that we choose to look at the place where we live. Water links us all and is a powerful force that shapes the landscape, our cities, and our lives. This year the ongoing drought in California reminds us that water is at the center of life and that is why it is at the center of The Watershed Project’s work. Building community and ecosystem resilience and managing risk for water-related aspects of the climate crisis is core to all of our projects.
So, we need to think about bringing nature back into the city to make communities that are most impacted by climate change more resilient in the face of it.
We’re doing this in several ways. Through our work with the coalition of partners on the North Richmond Shoreline Adaptation Project, also called the Living Levee. Through our Green Schoolyards program, which piloted a rainwater catchment system construction and maintenance project with John O’Connell High School in San Francisco, with generous support from the SF Public Utilities Commission. And through Urban Greening, like community workdays to care for bioswales on the Richmond Greenway, critical to keeping our green infrastructure projects alive.
At The Watershed Project we reimagine what our neighborhoods should look like in the future. We help neighbors look for solutions and places where we can incorporate nature into the built environment and where we can restore the functions of the watersheds to improve the quality of life for current and future residents. We’re investing in healthier watersheds, focusing on those communities most disproportionately affected by climate change, especially communities of color. TWP aims to create new forms of community wealth and help bring a new green economy that centers participation from the community members we are investing in.
We value our continuing shared work and all that we can achieve together over the next 25 Years. We know that we will only thrive if we join our efforts hand-in-hand together.
In solidarity,
-Juliana Gonzalez
Executive Director
