The Success of Our Junior Sanctuary Steward’s Expeditions!

By: Jadyn Polk, 4/3/2025

Save Our Shores’ Junior Sanctuary Stewards is a program that connects youth with hands-on environmental education. Our main goal has been to ensure equitable access to coastal environments for disadvantaged youth of middle-school age in the Monterey Bay area. The Junior Sanctuary Stewards (JSS) program does this by providing hands-on education to teach environmental literacy and promote healthy outdoor activities. Our team partnered with schools that serve youth within low income communities. The youth that have participated in the program live in Watsonville, Pajaro, Live Oak, and Castroville.

The JSS program is a 12-15 week afterschool program which ran from January 2023 through December 2024 and successfully engaged 8 cohorts made up of 222 youth. During this time, students were brought to outdoor learning sites such as beaches, coastal state parks, wetlands, slough systems, and watersheds. Excursions included whale watching, kayaking, and electric catamaran eco-tours. Our staff engaged participants in activities to grow their sense of environmental stewardship by coordinating beach cleanups, responsible wildlife observation, habitat restoration, and more. Additionally, the students also engaged in activities such as hiking, tide pooling, bird watching, and participated in art in nature projects. These experiences exposed participants to diverse marine ecosystems and conservation efforts.

Overall, the Junior Sanctuary Stewards afterschool program successfully met its goals to ensure equitable access to coastal environments for students, and to equip them with environmental knowledge. The combination of structured learning with excursions contributed to a meaningful and lasting impact on participants and our broader communities. The program received a lot of positive feedback from our students. For example, one student who participated in the Spring 2024 cohort said that their favorite part was when “…we went to explore places that were new to me.” Similarly, another student from a Spring cohort in 2023 said that her favorite part of the program was “going to the redwood forest…” and that there she learned “…what can be good or bad for the ecosystem.”

Save Our Shores is proud that our programmatic goals aligned with the priorities of the California Natural Resources Agency Youth Community Access grant which has funded the program from its development phase in 2022 through program launch and continuation through the end of 2024.

Another community access project through the Natural Resources Agency to improve youth access to natural and cultural resources.

The Junior Sanctuary Stewards program is funded by the California Natural Resources Agency Youth Community Access grant program.