The Brower Youth Awards honors six young people annually with a $3000 cash award and weeklong trip to the San Francisco Bay Area. During that week, award recipients will participate in a week of media and public outreach and be recognized at an awards ceremony attended by 900 members of the public.

Our honorees have protected Native sacred sites from development, restored wetlands, spread awareness about threatened sea turtles, coordinated student networks pushing for a clean energy future, and much, much more. Their impact doesn’t stop there. They continue as environmental change agents, writers, organizers, visionaries, and speakers, supported by Earth Island Institute’s New Leaders Initiative. Past winners have gone on to speak at Bioneers — like Erica Fernandez 2007, launch their own groups — like Rachel Barge 2007, and become Ashoka Fellows — like Billy Parish 2004. Join them. Apply today for the 2009 Brower Youth Award at 

http://www.broweryouthawards.org.

Applications for the 2009 awards are due May 15.

www.greenworkscleaners.com/greenhero

until April 10th, to vote for their favorite entry.

Program Description:
The Los Altos School District Living Classroom Program provides Garden Based, Hands-On Science Using School Gardens and Living Things to teach science and math. The Living Classroom Program offers a wide range of volunteer docent led, State Standard aligned lessons in science, math and social studies using outdoor school gardens and living things to make the learning relevant and real world. The program has helped establish educational gardens in four schools thus far which include California Native Plant habitat gardens for the study of ecology and life science, edible gardens for growing and harvesting food,and experimental gardens for long-term science experiments and math lessons. The gardens also provide important outdoor creative play areas for students to have more contact with nature (as opposed to blacktop) during recess time. All K-3 lessons offered this year were piloted last year and we are currently piloting grade 4-6 lessons. The lessons not only provide a superior teaching method, they also help instill an awareness and appreciation of the natural world and our local environment. The Program will have delivered over 110 lessons by the end of this school year (55 lessons to date) at four schools. Our goal is to expand to all 7 elementary schools in grades K-6 next year to serve close to 3,500 students.