| "This is not just watershed education or environmental education; it's a means for building stewards." | |
| Michael Marzolla, University of California Cooperative Extension |
|
Wanting your children to play on clean beaches transcends cultural and national differences. It is those differences, however, that can make it challenging for coastal resource managers to share water quality information with Latino and other minority populations.
Agua Pura, or Pure Water, is successfully engaging Latino youth in Santa Barbara, California, in water protection issues and activities. The result is a model for other resource educators to work with traditionally underserved communities.
"This is not just watershed education or environmental education; it's a means for building stewards," says Michael Marzolla, 4-H youth development advisor for the University of California Cooperative Extension in Santa Barbara.
Agua Pura began in 1999 with a Watershed Education Leadership Institute, which resulted in the creation of a planning manual for working with Latino youth.
Offshoots of the institute include an after-school watershed education program, led by Latino college interns, which has graduated 560 Latino children. Watershed education is being incorporated into summer day camps for Latino children, and the local housing authority has developed a watershed education program for the children of its majority Latino tenants.
The Agua Pura Leadership Institute brought together people who work with Latino youth on a regular basis, including teachers, Scout leaders, park rangers, museum employees, and other youth leaders, with city and county resource managers.
The three-day workshop presented information on water quality issues and provided hands-on activities, such as sampling for water quality. It covered the topics of adolescent behavior and the use of poetry and art to educate youth, and identified outreach methods and resources available to involve the Latino community in water education programs.
It also included discussions characterizing the Latino community and assessing how school curricula and activities could be modified to suit the needs of Latino youth.
The pilot institute was developed by the University of Wisconsin's Cooperative Extension Environmental Resources Center in Madison, Wisconsin, and the University of California Cooperative Extension 4-H Youth Development Program, and was funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The resulting manual could be used by environmental resource educators in other areas "to help them understand the Latino community," says Elaine Andrews, environmental education specialist for the University of Wisconsin Cooperative Extension. "It describes the process we went through and provides all the tools and resources we developed."
The keys to the process, Andrews says, were involving community leaders and listening to their advice. "If they say we need to work with families at the kitchen table, then we try to figure out a way to reach those families."
Marzolla has kept the Agua Pura program going by hiring college interns to lead after-school programs using a water quality curriculum, and developing projects with unusual partners, such as the housing authority and recreational fishermen.
"The message for the resource education community," he says, "is that you really can make a difference if you build relationships and really try to engage people... It takes a lot more time and concentration, but in the long run we're building effective community leadership."
To view Agua Pura: A Leadership Institute Planning Manual for Latino Communities, go to www.uwex.edu/erc/apsummary.html. You also may contact Michael Marzolla at (805) 692-1730, or ammarzolla@ucdavis.edu. You may contact Elaine Andrews at (608) 262-0142.
