With Earth Month in its final hours, we have two stories to share with you tonight, starting with this one: Hundreds of volunteers swarmed Lincoln Park today in a huge EarthCorps-led event. Ron Richardson covered it for WSB:

By Ron Richardson
Special to West Seattle Blog

In a project coordinated by Liz White of EarthCorps and teacher Jenny Farrell of Burien’s John F. Kennedy High School (from right in photo above), the entire JFK sophomore class set out today to work on ridding Lincoln Park of invasive plants such as ivy and blackberry bushes.

(A sampling of young leaders of the Lincoln Park cleanup. They represent EarthCorps, AmeriCorps, Kennedy High leaders and volunteers from around the world)
White explained that the mission of the organization is to “create healthy habitats, empower young leaders, and build communities around local environmental services.”

This is not the first time the EarthCorps program has worked at Lincoln Park.

It’s also worked at other West Seattle sites including cleanup at Me-Kwa-Mooks Park, restoring creek beds at Fauntleroy Park, and restoring Fauntleroy Creek as part of the Fish Ladder project in Fauntleroy.

JFK’s Farrell explained, “This year’s sophomore class chose to do a service project for the class’s annual retreat.” Selected Juniors and Seniors from Kennedy are trained as team leaders in the project, learning and using leadership skills.

(Moses Odhiambo from Kenya,and KHS Senior leaders Lia Swartout and Matthew Panther)

(KHS sophomores Tessa Garton, Jeff Morrison, Sarah Schmidt, and Cole McKay listen to
team leader Olga Romanova, on the right, from Kazakhstan)
Moses Odhiambo from Kenya and Olga Romanova from Kazahkstan are two of several young leadership volunteers at Lincoln Park who have come from their homes around the globe. They, as well as others from South Africa and Russia, learn leadership skills, and gain environmental-restoration knowledge so that they can return to their homelands and carry out similar projects with young people. The EarthCorps program truly has a global reach.

Other members of the EarthCorps leadership cadre are young folks from around the US who have signed up for AmeriCorps. Here at Lincoln Park they are helping lead Kennedy sophomores in the cleanup.

The Seattle-based non-profit EarthCorps has an ambitious program and pulls it off. These young people perform environmental tasks such as restoration of green spaces, trail building and maintenance, getting rid of invasive plants such as ivy and blackberry bushes, and other environmental tasks. They work in city, county and state parks, national forests, and other public places. We all benefit from their efforts.

The City of Seattleand the Cascade Land Conservancy together sponsor the Green Seattle project, which in turn has set up a partnership with EarthCorps to carry out projects such as the Lincoln Park cleanup. One of their goals is to clean up and restore local forests and woodlands by 2025.

We all benefit from their efforts. It is a win-win situation. These young folks are now better equipped to assume community leadership roles in the future. Hats off to EarthCorps and Kennedy Sophomores!

EarthCorps‘ website is at earthcorps.org; Green Seattle is online at greenseattle.org – where you will find listings for work parties just about every weekend in West Seattle parks (and other areas of the city).