UC Berkeley funding for BPFP “Greening Berkeley” partners

For the third year in a row, BPFP’s “Greening Berkeley Hands On” partnership has been awarded a Chancellor’s Community Partnership Fund grant by UC Berkeley. This year’s award of $24,000 will help BPFP affiliates carry out a wide variety of hands-on environmental projects. The grant pays for both materials and a UC student intern, who organized student volunteering through CalCorps, UC’s public-service arm.

Projects in the 2008 grant range from path construction and a solar light for the Santa Fe Right of Way, projects of Berkeley Path Wanderers, to tools and gloves for the city’s 14 public-school gardens, through Friends of School Gardens. The community-built Schoolhouse Creek Common will install chess tables and a bench. Nearby, Friends of Westbrae Commons will continue transforming the Ohlone Greenway south of Gilman with native coastal-prairie plants. Friends of Shorebird Park Nature Center will spread fresh sand and build new racks at Adventure Playground, while Aquatic Park EGRET will get upgraded nataive plants and upgraded wheelbarrows. Friends of Five Creeks will be able to install signs on local natural history and plant drought-tolerant natives in a variety of sites, from the Santa Fe Right of Way to Mortar Rock Park.

Aquatic Park EGRET also will partner with Earth Team Environmental Network, Berkeley Community Media, College of Natural Resources, and Berkeley Community Garden to involve local teens in habitat restoration days that teens also will film for showing on local cable TV. This project received a $5000 Chancellors Community Partnership grant.

Join us to carry out these projects! Contact BPFP or the affiliate group you are interested in — click on “Affiliated Groups” at right.

Annual update of 2007 Activities

Our annual Update highlights activities of BPFP and our affiliate groups from 2007:

From the Board introduction:

We are hopeful the energizing power of partnerships will become a theme of the 21st century. Around the world individuals are organizing in their local areas to improve their lives, and Berkeley Partners for Parks is a leader in those efforts in our community.

Sibley Volcanic Regional Park walk

Saturday, Jul 21 Sibley Volcanic Regional Park
Ron Sipherd 510 549-2908
Learn about this unusual part of the East Bay Regional Parks District on a 3-mile walk. From Berkeley, take Grizzly Peak Blvd. south until it ends at Skyline. Take Skyline south a short way to park entrance where we will meet. See www.ebparks.org/parks/sibley.htm
For a complete listing of BPWA’s Summer Saturday Walks visit: www.berkeleypaths.org/events/satwalks.htm