Austin, TX – The Captain Planet Foundation, an organization dedicated to funding educational programs that give students hands-on, project-driven learning experiences with real environmental outcomes, is proud to announce that Keep Austin Beautiful was recently awarded an Environmental Education Grant. Keep Austin Beautiful will use these funds to support Clean Creek Campus.
“We are so impressed with the project brought to us by Keep Austin Beautiful,” says Leesa Carter, Executive Director of the Foundation. “We are honored to play a part in funding its implementation and wish Keep Austin Beautiful great success on this important project. It is our hope that our combined efforts to educate, empower, involve and invest in today’s youth will cultivate a better tomorrow for everyone.”
Project Description
Clean Creek Campus engages 3rd-8th graders in hands-on, standards-aligned activities connecting classroom learning with on-the-ground service projects that focus on protecting water quality.
Participating schools receive two in-class lessons focused on watersheds, litter, pervious/impervious cover, and/or the importance of healthy soil.
Service projects include:
- Creek/Park Restoration: students participate in a 3-hour service learning field trip to a local creek/park during which they rotate through stations emphasizing creek restoration and water quality.
- Campus/Neighborhood Cleanup: students become neighborhood stewards and conduct a litter audit and cleanup.
- Native Habitat/Food Garden Maintenance: students explore pervious and impervious cover, soil composition, and plants varieties while refurbishing/maintaining a native habitat or vegetable garden on campus.
About Keep Austin Beautiful
Keep Austin Beautiful was established by the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce in 1985 to preserve Austin’s quality of life. The organization’s mission is to provide resources and education to engage citizens in building more beautiful communities. In one giant effort to fulfill the organization’s vision – for Austin to be the cleanest, most beautiful community – the organization mobilizes 26,500 volunteers and educates 11,800 youth annually.
About The Captain Planet Foundation
Based on the critically-acclaimed animated series Captain Planet and the Planeteers, CPF was co-founded in 1991 by media mogul Ted Turner and producer Barbara Pyle. Since then, the Captain Planet Foundation has played a critical role in helping to ensure that the next generation of business leaders and policy makers are environmentally literate citizens who leverage technology and information to manage and protect the air, land, and water upon which all life depends.
CPF is a grant-making foundation that has funded over 2,000 hands-on environmental education projects with schools and non-profits that serve children in all 50 U.S. states and in 23 countries internationally. More than 1.2 million children have directly participated in and benefited from these educational projects. In addition to its Small Grants Program, the Captain Planet Foundation also operates the following programs: Project Learning Garden, Project Endangered Species, the Leadership Center, SAGES, Planeteer Clubs, and a number of other science education initiatives that promote the intersections between technology, innovation, the environment and personal action.
For more information: www.captainplanetfoundation.org.
