Launching the Global Call to Youth in the Cesar Chavez Middle School

Dear friends,

The Project Jatropha team is very excited to announce that we are scheduled to launch the Global Call to Youth (GCY) in the Cesar Chavez middle school, Hayward, CA. This is our first school in the USA. Though the official planting is tomorrow, we started the actual work a few months ago. We are very happy to welcome Tameeka Kelly, an environmental activist, to be our GCY coordinator of Hayward region. She became interested in Project Jatropha in the beginning of 2010 when she was working as a director of EngageHer.org. She recognized the global significance of Project Jatropha and invited me to be a keynote speaker in a middle school girl’s leadership conference. Soon after learning about the GCY, our tree planting/fruit orchard program, she offered to help us work locally. Her knowledge and experience in working with local NPOs and high schools is a great asset for Project Jatropha. She has organized and worked progressively in the non-profit sector for 4 years, primarily focusing on multicultural youth.

She connected us to Mr. Josh Bennett, a fellow environmental activist and the coordinator of after school gardening club at Cesar Chavez middle school. After learning about our project, he welcomed our idea with open arms. We met with him at the middle school last month. We also got a chance to look at the landscape and available area to come up with a plan.

After the meeting, we decided that this was a perfect school to launch GCY for the first time in the Bay Area. Yesterday, the team met Josh at the Berkeley Horticultural Nursery to purchase the plants. The list includes germanium, sage, thyme, marigold, fig, golden delicious apples, sorrel, rosemary, curry leaves, etc. We enjoyed spending time at the nursery. The plants are waiting at the school for us to come by. It is a big day for us tomorrow. We are very excited to launch the planting venture on Earth Service Day involving the youth of Cesar Chavez middle school. I will do the next blog entry this weekend about our venture.

~Apoorva