Junior Sanctuary Stewards
Save Our Shores Junior Sanctuary Stewards (JSS) is an after school program for middle school age youth in the Monterey Bay area. This program was co-developed with the input and guidance from a Youth Advisory Board, consisting of high school age students, to make this program meaningful and culturally relevant to the middle-school participants that we aim to engage.
Through our 30 years of serving the communities around Monterey Bay, we have found that many young people experience their first trip to the beach through Save Our Shores programs. For this reason and to inspire all youth to take part in ocean stewardship, we strive to continue to break down access barriers to outdoor learning around the coast.
Three Key Objectives of the Junior Sanctuary Stewards Program
- Increase equitable access to coastal and other ecosystems for underserved youth through a field trip-based afterschool program.
- Engage youth in hands-on learning to understand how our marine and coastal ecosystems are critical life-sustaining resources and introduce them to career paths, volunteer opportunities, and steps to engage in advocacy for our oceans.
- Create space for youth to understand how they are connected to nature and to inspire youth to become stewards of their environment.
JSS is a 10-12-week field trip-based program where nature is the classroom and offers youth the opportunity to experience a different ecosystem each week.
Students are transported to different experiential learning sites, such as beaches, rivers, coastal trails, and wetlands, where they engage in environmental education activities.
Activities and curricula are designed to connect students with nature, impart knowledge of local ecosystems and the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary (MBNMS), participate in data collection and species identification, nurture creativity with art and storytelling projects, and hear from a diverse range of conservation and science professionals from their communities.
Transportation is one of the major barriers for youth to experience our coastal ecosystems. There are few convenient public transport options from undeserved communities to our beaches, coastal state parks, or systems of sloughs and wetlands. Additionally, the students we provide programming to are among the demographic who are often in need of after-school programming, as parents cannot leave work to pick up their children at the end of the school day. These youth in particular need access to safe, supervised programs that engage youth in meaningful ways, and that bridge the gap in time between the end of the school day and the end of the workday.
Our Junior Sanctuary Stewards program is designed to address these issues in our communities.