If you would like to support any of these projects, please email Araceli at Araceli@lanatureforall.org
Ariel Dela Cruz
Project Title: WaterSheds Down to LB
Project Area: San Gabriel Mountains, Water Education, Youth Outdoor Education
Quick Summary: WaterSheds Down to LB is an outdoor opportunity that brings youth from underserved coastal communities to the mountains. The target audience is Edison Elementary located in Downtown Long Beach. The goal is to inspire youth about environmentalism and pursue careers within the environmental sector through an outdoor experience in the San Gabriel Mountains. Early exposure to the outdoors will help create a relationship to nature, broaden the horizons of a variety of healthy activities, and relay the importance of the landscape and watershed in Southern California.
Read more about this wonderful project here
Brenda Yancor
Project Title: Fire Ecology Bike Tour of Santa Fe Dam Burn Scar
Project Area: Bike ride with native plant and fire ecology; National Recreation Area
Quick Summary: LACBC has been working with Belvedere Middle School since January of 2020 to develop students’ bicycle handling and safety skills. This project will facilitate access for students and their families to visit a space in which they can ride, relax and connect with nature in a way that isn’t readily available in their own neighborhoods. This project will take 15-30 participants and bicycles from the school to the Santa Fe Dam, where we will connect with one another, learn about transit options to return to the dam, and learn about Fire Ecology and observe how it manifests in our environment.
Read more about this wonderful project here
Jordan Salcido
Project Title: Green Space for Head Space
Project Area: Youth, National Recreation Area, Art, Native Plants
Quick Summary: This project seeks to educate and empower youth to become environmental justice advocates and activists for life through meaningful hands-on opportunities to take action in their community. In doing so, youth will have a first hand experience at addressing issues that matter to them, setting them up for a lifelong journey of uplifting voices in their community while also diving deeper into the critical interconnectedness we all share with nature. This project will highlight the exponential effect time in nature has on our mental health, while demonstrating that access to nature should be a right granted to all.
Read more about this wonderful project here.
Kyle Cavazos
Project Title: Mindfulness in Nature Community Event
Project Area: Mental Health, Art, and San Gabriel Mountains
Quick Summary: The Mindfulness in Nature Community event is a gathering for local community members to experience spiritual practices in nature, such as meditation and grounding, with guidance from a self-healing focused zine. Participants will be guided through a short meditation and self-healing techniques to help foster a mindful connection with the Earth. The community project is centered on clearing invasive species and/or cleaning up trash to promote native plants to help improve the health of the local ecosystem.
Read more about this wonderful project here
Lionel Mares
Project Title: Keeping Our Mountains Clean
Project Area: San Gabriel Mountains, Community Clean up
Quick Summary: I want to help connect people to nature by doing community outreach. I would like to educate my community about public lands and why it’s important for the community to learn about the Environment. The focus of this project is to educate people about the negative impact trash and plastics has on the environment like the mountains and rivers.
Read more about this wonderful project here
Melissa Diaz
Project Title: Expand Protection of the San Gabriel Mountains in the Santa Clarita Area
Project Area: Angeles National Forest, San Gabriel National Monument
Quick Summary: To expand protection of the San Gabriel Mountains specifically in the Santa Clarita area by restoring a currently abandoned trail and campsite. This will be accomplished by addressing Congressman MIke Garcia, who is also a resident of Santa Clarita, and asking him if there are any extra funds that can be allocated specifically to the Canyon Country area of the Forest. The money allocated will provide signage, trash receptacle,s and restoration of toilet vaults. I will be reaching out to Santa Clarita Magazine as well for publication support regarding the campaign expanding forest protection.
Read more about this wonderful project here
Perla Iliana Lagunas Abundez
Project Title: Nature Heals Field Trip
Project Area: San Gabriel Mountains, Transit to Trails, Native Plants, Clean up and Park Equity
Quick Summary: “Nature Heals ” Research reveals that environments can increase or reduce our stress, which in turn impacts our bodies. What you are seeing ,hearing, experiencing at any moment is changing not only your mood ,but how your nervous ,endocrine ,and immune systems are working.Research done in hospitals ,offices,and schools has found that even a simple plant in a room can have a significant impact on stress and anxiety.
Read more about this wonderful project here
Sandra (Sol) Ruiz
Project Title: “From Local Parks to Local Mountains”
Project Area: Youth, Transit to Trail, Environmental Education and San Gabriel Mountains
Quick Summary: “From Local Parks to Local Mountains” is a nature-based curriculum, leadership training, and career/study pathway for middle school youth, who are part of the Bridges Program at Heart of Los Angeles (HOLA)–located in the Westlake area. Students will learn about the intricate system of dependence among animals, plants, the natural elements, and people to survive and thrive; will develop a critical lens to address complex environmental issues affecting local communities; and will participate in four in-person field trips to two local parks (MacArthur Park and Vista Hermosa Park), the Natural History Museum of LA, and the San Gabriel Mountains.
Read more about this wonderful project here
Zee Zetino
Project Title: As above so Below: Black Workers Deserve Wellness
Project Area: San Gabriel Mountains, Black joy, Black liberation, Transit to Trails, and Park Equity
Quick Summary: ‘As above so Below: Black Workers Deserve Wellness’, will provide community-centered programming that will explore nature-based learning opportunities to expand how Black folks experience/understand Wellness/Healing Justice. Through various Transit to Trails programs, LA Black Worker Center members and staff will visit local parks in South Central LA and state beaches within LA County and have the opportunity to experience the San Gabriel Mountains–while instilling reconnection, protection, and organization to public lands while ultimately finding healing with self and the natural world.
Read more about this wonderful project here.
Angel Arellano
Project Title: San Gabriel Mountains Public Service Announcement
Quick Summary: My project’s focus is supporting the Public Lands Campaign, specifically the San Gabriel Mountains. Outreach will be done through Technology (Social Media Platforms). Education will be done through a series of short informational pictures/videos. Advocacy will be done through multiple Call To Actions defined through Photography/Videography/Film. Communications will be done through Email, Social Media, etc.
Read more about this wonderful project here.
Azeneth Martinez
Project Title: “ The mountains have no borders” Mural
Project Area: San Gabriel Mountains, Youth, Art, and Native Plants
Quick Summary: The Mountains Have No Borders mural will connect families from North East San Fernando Valley to the San Gabriel Mountains. This project will provide opportunities for families to help remain a pocket park in the city of North Hills. By using art as a form of explore the context of immigration and caretaking of the land. I chose to base my project on a location outside the SGM to show how location does not define a connection to the land.
Read more about this wonderful project here
