Supporting Tomorrow’s
Environmental Champions Today

 

Since 2011, the SDG&E Environmental Champions program has supported hundreds of non-profit organizations dedicated to environmental literacy, climate action, and climate community resilience, with the goal of developing the next generation of environmental stewards in diverse and underserved communities.

Environmental Champions

SDG&E is proud to showcase the work of some of our most recent
Environmental Champions.

Artform

Art FORM

As a creative reuse organization, Art FORM magnifies climate change through art-based educational workshops offered to students from local Title I schools. Students explore how ecosystems are endangered by climate change, interpret its effects, and propose solutions through art. As a distance learning adaptation, SDG&E Environmental Champions supports Art FORM activity kits that are distributed to students for use during virtual climate action workshops. All materials used at Art FORM are reclaimed materials diverted from landfills, supporting zero waste practices.

Learn more about Art FORM

Escondido Creek Conservancy

The Escondido Creek Conservancy enhances the lives of people and wildlife in the Escondido Creek watershed by connecting youth and adults to their natural surroundings. Through the Trout in the Classroom program, the Conservancy teaches about climate resilience using trout as a keystone species. Students raise trout in their classrooms and learn the importance of clean water and a healthy ecosystem. Through a series of field trips to local natural areas, Title I students from park-poor communities eventually release their trout at Lake Miramar. Trout in the Classroom highlights the vulnerability of wildlife to climate change and other environmental pressures, and it empowers students to make a difference as the next generation of environmental stewards.

Learn more about Escondido Creek Conservancy

Escondido Creek Conservatory
Lumbercycle

Lumbercycle

Lumbercycle works to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by diverting trees and other woody biomass from local landfills. Lumbercycle’s model of transforming removed trees into lumber creates an efficient byproduct that allows milled trees to continue sequestering carbon for many decades after a tree is removed. SDG&E Environmental Champions supports a demonstration educational project that empowers people to rethink the way they remove trees. In partnership with San Diego Habitat Conservancy, the project removes and repurposes fallen trees from the Ramona Grasslands Preserve and makes final lumber materials available for community projects, such as benches and shade structures.

Learn more about Lumbercycle

Outdoor Outreach

Outdoor Outreach connects youth to the transformative power of the outdoors. SDG&E Environmental Champions supports the Outdoor Explorers program, a place-based climate science education program for urban and diverse teens. More than 1,000 teens, many of whom identify as Black, Latinx, or people of color, learn how climate change will affect the places that they visit and inhabit, and how their stewardship, advocacy, and leadership as empowered youth and adults can preserve and protect our shared environment.

Learn more about Outdoor Outreach

Outdoor Outreach