Impact Grant

Literacy for Environmental Justice

3-year $100,000 impact grant

literacy for environmental justice, san francisco, ca

WATER HARVESTING FOR CLIMATE-smart landscaping

Woodard & Curran Foundation is pleased to support Literacy for Environmental Justice's important project in San Francisco's Bayview Hunters Point neighborhood. Historically, the region has faced disproportionate rates of industrial pollution, high rates of unemployment, and ongoing marginalization. Southeast San Francisco is home to more than two-thirds of San Francisco’s pollution sources and one third of the city’s hazardous waste sites. 

The Foundation's grant specifically helps LEJ complete a water-harvesting/storage/distribution system that includes a climate-smart native plant garden, interpretive signage, and educational programming at Candlestick Point Park, California's first urban state park.

Green Infrastructure Highlights

  • Site will divert and recharge on average 75,000 gallons of rain water annually of which 16,000 gallons will be stored for urban agriculture purposes 
  • Expansion will result in 16 new community garden plots for local residents 
  • LEJ’s native plant nursery will quadruple annual output to 50-100,000 plants
  • The new bioswale, rain garden, native meadow and demonstration gardens will serve as living library of mother stock for the nursery and teaching examples of San Francisco’s unique and threatened native plant communities

Learn more: watch the Candlestick Point Eco-Steward video.

Teens get first-hand experience as nursery employees and through school visits.

Teens get first-hand experience as nursery employees and through school visits.

PROGRAM OUTCOMES

  • Capitol greening improvements - will create opportunities for volunteers, interns, and community engagement.
  • Workforce development – will expand opportunities for local youth. 
  • Green Infrastructure projects - will build capacity and presence in San Francisco and earn additional income to support programming.
  • New park improvements - will help local residents engage in new ways and improve overall health and wellbeing.
““We are not just restoring habitat and fixing nature. We are also fixing people’s thinking towards nature.”
~ Jose Jimenez, age 17, Candlestick Point Eco-apprentice”