Come Earth Day, April 22nd at 2:00 pm, a number of staff and volunteers from Bay Area Wilderness Training (BAWT) will be taking time away from their work getting kids outdoors to green-up the curbside outside their office on the corner of 23rd and Broadway in downtown Oakland. When BAWT moved its offices from San Francisco to Oakland a few months ago, the curbside was filled with litter, weeds, and dog feces. 

 “We’re all about connecting kids to the outdoors so that they understand the importance of taking care of the earth. We figured we’d better start by taking care of the space right outside our front door” says Founder and Co-director Kyle Macdonald.

With generous financial support from the owner of the building, and some discounted plants from Annie’s Annuals, a nursery in Berkeley, BAWT purchased a variety of hearty, drought tolerant plants and compost to green up the curbside. Staff and volunteers will spend Earth Day afternoon planting and landscaping the area.  The group is welcoming the neighborhood to help with the planting.

Macdonald continued, “It seemed appropriate to do this on Earth Day. We’re hoping this area becomes a bright spot where people stop to look at the flowers and enjoy this small patch of wilderness in an otherwise urban landscape.”

BAWT (www.bawt.org) is a project of the Earth Island Institute, a 501(c)3 corporation. It provides Bay Area youth agency staff and teachers with wilderness leadership training and outdoor equipment, to enable them to take young people on outdoor adventures that inspire, challenge, and nurture a conservation ethic.