Educating Youth Across the Country about Sustainability and Green Careers
November 2023
Progress Newsletter
Educating Youth Across the Country about Sustainability and Green Careers
By Savannah Lira, PVF Program Officer
PVF is proud to serve as the fiscal sponsor for Sustainable Future Outdoor Academy, a charitable initiative creating and delivering impactful green careers field trips and sustainability experiences to youth.
Sustainable Future Outdoor Academy (SFOA) teaches young people about sustainability and introduces them to green careers by organizing career education field trips. They work directly with local sustainable businesses and community based partners, taking students outdoors into the field to find out what green careers are really like by seeing business operations up close, speaking with owners or executives and employees, and getting hands-on with tastings, demos, and other activities.
SFOA currently has a partnership with the San Mateo County Office of Education to fund these field trips for 1,000 middle and/or high school students per school year. These students come from specific environmental science, agriculture and STEM classes where they can tie this experience into the curriculum they are learning in the classroom.
PVF recently tagged along on a Sustainable Water field trip with Tierra Linda Middle School. We started the afternoon at the Pulgas Water Temple, a monument to the engineering marvel that brought Hetch Hetchy water more than 160 miles across California from the Sierra Nevada Mountains to the Bay Area.
50+ students were met by a representative from the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission to learn about the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir that provides water to their local communities. They also got to hear from a park ranger about his responsibilities and what type of jobs or internships students could do in the future.
Next we traveled over to Impossible Foods in Redwood City where the students learned about the impact the beef industry has on the environment. The average water footprint per calorie for beef is 20 times larger than for cereals and starchy roots. To put just the climate impact in perspective, if 1% of the production of beef burgers eaten in America every year were swapped for a plant-based burger, that would mean approximately 12 billion gallons less water use.
The students had the opportunity to mix together the ingredients to create an impossible burger and taste test a slider, before donning their lab coats and safety goggles to enter the flavor lab! They were introduced to a variety of jobs within the company - from product sourcing to taste testing - that each play their own part in supporting a sustainable environment.
By the end of the day, students and PVF staff alike came away with a deeper understanding of our precious water resources and how we can become better environmental stewards.
PVF is proud to support SFOA in their important work and looks forward to our next field trip!
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Originally posted in Philanthropic Ventures Foundation’s Progress Newsletter, November 2023