Environmental Education Creates a Cycle of Care for Rivers and People
Earlier this fall, TRT Program Manager, Blanca Ruiz, was a featured panelist at a recent California Natural Resources Association Speaker Series. This most recent conversation, Latino Leadership In Conservation: Celebrating Heritage and Environmental Stewardship was led by California Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot. In Blanca’s talk, she highlighted the importance of creating access to the Tuolumne River in Modesto and about how her education work inspires a cycle of care for the Tuolumne River and the low-income communities that live alongside it.
“I’m helping to fill the space between the lower income communities who live next to the river in the Central Valley. Being a part of that community—I lived there, I grew up there—means I know a lot of the disparities that happen in those communities. I’m also trying to include why we should care about the river … and how we can create a cycle of care. In our communities in Modesto, people have a thousand different problems to care about. Why should they care about the river, how do we connect them and continue to inspire future generations to care,” Blanca shared when asked about the education programs she runs out of TRT’s Central Valley Office.
TRT’s Central Valley programs like Trekking the Tuolumne, Explore the Tuolumne, Outdoor Education Program, and Explore Parks bring Central Valley youth and families into connection with their local rivers, while sharing environmental knowledge and creating access to nature-based recreation that may otherwise be out of reach.
Central Valley Program Manager, Blanca Ruiz and fellow cyclists on a recent Explore Parks visit to Dos Rios State Park.
During the talk with Secretary Crowfoot, Blanca went on to share her personal career journey, advice she would give to other environmental educators making their way in a historically white field, climate resilience at Dos Rios State Park, and the power of caring about multiple things at once.
“We can care about multiple things at once. Figuring out how you’re going to pay the electricity bill but also figuring out why the river overflows and floods your home, or near your home, every winter is also important for everyone to understand. The curiosity and the want to know is there; we just have to figure out how to get communities to those spaces,” Blanca offers.
Leading with curiosity and care are calls to action that flow throughout the whole Tuolumne watershed. Stay tuned for more clear-eyed ways to celebrate our shared rivers and to support resilient ecosystems and communities throughout the watershed.
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