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PHILANTHROPY NEWS DIGEST
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| Name: | Earth Force |
| Founded: | 1993 |
| President: | Thomas Martin |
| Address: | 1908 Mount Vernon Avenue, Second Floor, Alexandria, VA 22301 |
| Phone: | 703.299.9400 |
| E-mail: | earthforce@earthforce.org |
| URL: | http://www.earthforce.org |
| Mission: | Earth Force is young people changing their communities and caring for our environment now, while developing life-long habits of active citizenship and environmental stewardship. |
| Background: |
The creation of Earth Force in 1993 by the Pew Charitable Trusts recognized two emerging national trends: young people's overwhelming desire to act on behalf of the environment and their desire to help their communities through service. Polls consistently indicate that youth have a passion for the environment and wish to improve it.
Earth Force is youth-driven and has a national Youth Advisory Board comprised of 15 members, ages 10-17. The YAB helps develop and implement the organization's programs. |
| Current Programs: | The organization's Community Action and Problem Solving (CAPS) program combines the best practices of environmental education, civic engagement, and service learning. The CAPS framework enables middle school students to identify an environmental issue in their community through research and then develop and implement a sustainable action plan to address that issue. Earth Force has established sites to implement CAPS in several communities across the nation, including Chicago; Philadelphia; Denver; West Palm Beach, Florida; Erie, Pennsylvania; Charleston, South Carolina; and Portland, Oregon.
Earth Force acquired GREEN (Global Rivers Environmental Education Network) — an organization originally founded in the early '80s — in 1999. GREEN, which helps young people protect the rivers, streams, and other vital water resources in their communities, merges hands-on scientific learning with civic action. The program also offers testing equipment and training manuals, which can be used by program participants to assess the health of a watershed and develop a sustainable plan to improve water quality in their area.
Get Out Spoke’n! |
| Recent Successes: | Earth Force projects won numerous awards in 1999 and 2000, including the Presidential Environmental Youth Award and the South Carolina Superintendent's Service Learning Award. The School District of Philadelphia officially identified the new Earth Force office in Philadelphia as a community partner and recognized the CAPS program as meeting its new service-requirements and curriculum standards in the areas of citizenship, communications, and problem-solving.
From successfully rallying the city of Charleston, South Carolina, to build a bike path built on a new bridge to testifying in front of 1,700 citizens against the construction of a planned global port, Earth Force youth across the nation are creating better communities and a better environment. As a result of Charleston youths' efforts, two Earth Force classes swept the state-wide elementary school category for the Environmental EAGLES Exemplary Achievement of Genuine Leaders through Environmental Stewardship) Awards, presented by SCANA, South Carolina's electric utility. Karen Cleyrat, a teacher at Bellbrook Junior High in Ohio (near Dayton), is working with her class on a Get Out Spoke'n! project that challenges a proposed Ohio House bill that would force the state's parks and recreation departments to put fences between private property and bike paths if property owners request it. Students in Ms. Cleyrat's class have made presentations to county commissioners, started a letter writing campaign, and gathered 1,700 signatures in support of their counter-proposal. Adam Wallace of Washington Park High School in Racine, Wisconsin, was using GREEN equipment to monitor the river that flows through his community when he made a disturbing discovery: the quality of the water was getting worse. Adam leapt into action and contacted local officials, who were able to find and fix a sewer that was leaking into the river. |
| Web Site: | The Earth Force Web site (www.earthforce.org) features dozens of stories like those above about young people who are working to create a better, healthier environment for all of us. |
| Funding Needs: | Funding is sought for programs and activities focused on environmental stewardship, youth development and leadership, youth action, and after-school/out-of-school programming. Specific funding is needed to: (1) transition program resources to CD-ROM and Web-based tools so that more educators and youth will have access to them; (2) produce new civic action tools for young people and their educators to better protect their rivers and watersheds; and
(3) expand the number of classrooms and clubs participating in the organization's programs.
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Last Week Stand Up For Kids
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Every week, the NPO Spotlight in Philanthropy News Digest highlights the activities of a nonprofit organization; periodically, we shift the focus to an NGO in a country other than the U.S. Organizations are selected, using a range of criteria, to ensure the broadest possible representation of the nonprofit sector, both in the U.S. and abroad.
If you'd like to have your NPO or NGO appear in the "Spotlight," e-mail a profile of your organization (using the format above) to spotlight@fdncenter.org, or send a hard copy via snail mail to: NPO Spotlight(The editors of Philanthropy News Digest reserve the right to edit submissions.) |
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