The Return of the Natives Restoration Education Project (RON) is the education and outreach branch of the Watershed Institute of the California State University Monterey Bay. In addition, RON is a major partner with CSUMB?s Service Learning Institute providing student placement and supervision with RON?s partners. RON is a community and school based environmental education program dedicated to involving students (Kindergarten through University) in native plant and habitat restoration projects in the schoolyard and the community. RON activities include school-based native plant gardens, nature areas, and greenhouses, as well as, large-scale habitat restoration and native plant landscaping projects in parks and open spaces in the Monterey Bay Area. RON?s newest partner program, the Garden of Learning of the Monterey County Farm to School Partnership, fosters an understanding amongst local K-12 students of the local food shed--where our food comes from--and the relationship between healthy agroecosystems, healthy watersheds, and personal health, through school and farm based organic vegetable propagation.
RON's environmental goal is to protect the waters of the Monterey Bay through restoration of the waterways and the lands draining in the Bay. RON's social goal is to bring people and nature together on our restoration and garden projects in the watersheds of the Monterey Bay from the Monterey Peninsula to North Monterey County and from Salinas to San Ardo.
Major areas of focus over the past years have been on the Ft. Ord Public Lands, the Moss Landing Dunes, the Carmel Lagoon, the Moro Cojo and Tembladero Sloughs and with Salinas City Parks and on the CSUMB Campus. This work involves long term partnerships with agencies, schools, and community groups. Many of our projects involve Service Learning or Earth Systems Science and Policy students of the University. RON is a major community outreach program of CSUMB.
RON's school and youth programs form the core of the program and include teacher trainings, construction of school gardens and greenhouses (18 at present from Martin Luther King Middle School in Seaside to Los Padres School in Salinas), and coordination of school field trips to restoration sites. The once monthly RON teacher training programs are offered through an Environmental Education Leadership Team. A Continuing Education Unit (CEU) based Certificate in Environmental Education and Environmental Service Learning began in 2004. A RON curriculum resource library is available for use by students and teachers. To date RON has trained over 450 teachers, and has hosted over 3,000 community members and 10,000 school children in community planting days. Each year at least 2,000 school children, college students, and volunteers, propagate and outplant over 50,000 native plants at restoration sites. RON Staff helps local teachers in establishing native plant gardens on their school sites. RON is also proud to host a group of developmentally disabled adults, The Green Thumbs, and their teachers daily at Watershed Institute greenhouses. The Greenthumbs come from the Gateway Centers and from Monterey County Office of Education.
In RON school greenhouses, service learning students from CSUMB and "Garden of Learning" staff help low-income Latino farmers teach schoolchildren how to plant and care for organic vegetable starts that are later transplanted to the farmers' fields. In exchange, the farmers conduct classroom visits where the schoolchildren learn about the influence of agroecosystems on watershed health and personal health and lead farm trips where the students learn about their food shed by maintaining, harvesting, and eating vegetables that they have helped to grow. The program has grown from a pilot project with one farmer and 20 children in one school during its first season to10 farmers working with approximately 775 students in the schools producing approximately thousands vegetable starts over the course of 3 seasons. A new partner program?the Monterey County Farm to School Program shares office space with RON.
The RON team consists of service learning, education, and curriculum specialists, habitat restoration scientists and specialists, a landscape architect specializing in native plants, classroom teachers, students of all ages, and interested community members. The Return of the Natives Restoration Education Project is proud of the diversity of dedicated people who make our many projects possible.
