Impact

Mission Statement

KIDS for the BAY collaborates with teachers to inspire environmental consciousness in children and cultivate a love of learning. We are committed to equal access to environmental education and to restoring a healthy environment for all communities.

We believe that Everyone Is an Environmentalist, and we provide increased access to engaging environmental education opportunities, outdoor education and nature education experiences, especially for our under-resourced school communities.

KIDS for the BAY’s Environmental Education Programs:

  • Turn school students onto science through exciting, hands-on lessons and activities that engage all students, including English Language Learners
  • Connect students with nature in the local watershed, and on field trips to local creek, bay, and ocean habitats
  • Empower students to take environmental action in service-learning Action Projects that help solve critical environmental problems and raise awareness about environmental health and justice issues
  • Create a lasting impact through our Teacher Training and Schoolwide Impact Models, which provide teachers and schools with the curricula, equipment, and support needed to continue teaching environmental science each year.

Since 1992, KIDS for the BAY has:

  • Engaged 104,789 students and more than 12,800 parents in meaningful environmental education programs.
  • Provided curricula, resources, and training to 4,190 teachers.

Since 1992, KIDS for the BAY students have:

  • Connected with nature in their local watersheds and on special field trips to unique creek, bay, delta and ocean habitats
  • Become excited about learning hands-on science in the living laboratory of our inter-connected creek-bay-ocean San Francisco Bay estuary watershed
  • Become leaders in their families and in their school communities, and taught others how to protect, clean up and restore local watershed environments, through student-led Schoolwide Assemblies, class presentations to families, and educational posters and videos created and shared by our young environmentalists
  • Cleaned up 40,185 gallons of trash from school neighborhoods, local watersheds and creek, bay and ocean habitats
  • Planted 20,201 native plants in creek and bay habitats
  • Removed 35,406 invasive plants from creek and bay habitats
  • Learned how to make natural pesticides for their school and home gardens, taught their families and peer students how to prepare and cook bay and delta fish to reduce intake of toxins, studied the impacts of ocean acidification on shelled organisms, and worked to reduce their carbon footprints at their schools.

Every year, KIDS for the BAY students, teachers and families go on special nature-based field trips to enjoy, explore and clean up a local creek, bay, delta or ocean habitat. The map below includes some of our past and current partner school and field trip locations.