WEBVTT

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Esther to college she is

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a nonprofit organization and we work with
the community to restore local ecosystems

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so what that means is that we work with
lots of volunteers including students and

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other people of the community to remove
weeds and plant plants in our public open

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spaces we also help monitor water quality
of our creeks and we have several

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different education programs for
local use. The reason that we

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restore our local ecosystems is that we
are building up the resiliency of our

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region to help withstand the effects of
climate change so we're helping increase

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native habitat for insects and birds we're
also restoring shorelines and creeks to

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help deal with floods and more storm
events and most importantly we're actually

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educating the next generation of environmental
leaders. I'm out front felt with

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grassroots ecology and we're one of the
recipients of the 2019 sustainability

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champions. What we do is we organize and
conduct volunteer work days so that we can

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help restore habitat on top of that we also
do what we call community science where

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people go out to the creek and measure water
quality and they look at insects from

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the creek that help indicate how
healthy are creeks are. There's

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a lot of activity that happens here you'll
see lots of high school students you

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know pulling weeds planting plants you know
doing water quality samples and that's

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a great goal in of itself our hope and what
we've observed is that this extends far

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beyond the event that people are participating
and we think that they will take

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that what they learned and their experiences
that here back to their home their

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school their work and really you know
change some of their behavior station of

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their thinking so that their
overall effect on the region is is

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a better one so whether that be that they
plant some beneficial plants in their

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backyard to chat attract pollinators that
are endangered or whether be that they

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make different decisions when they're
buying shampoo because now they know that

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micro beads can end up in our creeks that
is really the the long term impact that

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we hope to have with these programs when
I think about the future I think more

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about the commitment that we've made to
these communities. So what that means is

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continue to steward the land to continue
to educate the next you know the next

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grade level than all the kids that are
going through so that they can get out and

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appreciate their local open space and creek
and and take that with them as they go

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forward so I would say the
future is really continuing

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a lot of the work we've had deepening our
relationships with partners like the city

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of Cupertino and then reaching out to even
more people in the community to get them

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involved.