News online for Encinitas, Calif.

North Coast Current

News online for Encinitas, Calif.

North Coast Current

News online for Encinitas, Calif.

North Coast Current

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Encinitas groups aim to build Education Cluster

Encinitas should expect exciting environmental educational programs from the new E3 Cluster. The Encinitas Environmental Education Cluster, or the E3 Cluster, consists of the Encinitas Union School District, Magdalena Ecke Family YMCA, San Diego Botanic Garden, Seacrest Village Retirement Communities and Leichtag Foundation, which sit near one another east-west by Quail Gardens Drive and Saxony Road, and north-south by Leucadia and Encinitas Boulevard.

The six nonprofit organizations formally announced their partnership on April 25.

“We wanted to share with the community that as neighbors and now partners, we intend on working together to create experiential learning opportunities,” said Joshua Sherman, communications associate for the Leichtag Foundation.

Though there are no concrete plans while the E3 Cluster looks for adequate funding, it has released its ideas of what this collaboration will accomplish. The E3 Cluster aims to promote nature preservation by offering various programs of environmental education to people of all ages. It has begun to implement these ideas by linking accommodations with each of the six neighboring facilities. Before their announced alliance, the E3 Cluster partners shared their resources with one another in multiple ways. The Leichtag Foundation leases space to the San Diego Botanic Garden for horticultural research, the YMCA offers their volunteer services to the San Diego Botanic Garden, and they all share their designated parking areas when needed.

The San Dieguito Heritage Museum and the Encinitas Union School District are actively creating the curriculum for environmental education programs that will be implemented in the district’s elementary schools. A layout has also been created for an Education and Events Pavilion that would occupy 67 ½ acres of the Botanic Garden’s ranch. The pavilion would be a working greenhouse that would be used as a means to visually teach subjects such as the sciences, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Julian Duval, president of the San Diego Botanic Garden, said he feels that, at this point, there is a shortage of focus on these topics in the United States. “We have always prided ourselves on being the leader in those areas, and as time has gone on it seems that we have drifted from being the leader and there are a lot of countries that are surpassing us in terms of the focus on those topics,” Duval said.

Educators continue to work actively with the cluster on the design of the Education and Events Pavilion. The pavilion is being designed to teach the state curriculum using the farm as a model. It would include a functioning kitchen section that would allow its visitors to be hands on with the preparation of the food. The idea of the kitchen is to show children where their food comes from and encourage them to continue eating healthy.

“Parents more so than ever before have a bigger challenge in teaching their kids to eat healthy and we want to help provide an alternative to that,” Duval said. With so many fast food corporations and the accommodations that they offer, it is not difficult for parents and their children to stray away from healthy eating and the pavilion would help to provide the education as well as an alternative to children’s poor food intake.

Not only would the new pavilion offer a healthy eating program, but it would also promote the importance of nature preservation. Duval emphasized that “there is no alternative to the air that we breathe, to the water that we drink, and certainly the food that we eat. All of those things are based on the real world that we have to take care of on this planet; that’s one of the reasons why kids need to be outdoors and experience this early on.”

Through the pavilion, children would have the opportunity to build a relationship with nature while having the chance to feel a sense of responsibility for preserving the environment as they become adults.

The Leichtag Foundation also has resources that it intends to use to energize the opportunities that the E3 Cluster will provide. It is in the early stages of fundraising for the Education and Events Pavilion and, as Duval said, it is in the so called “quiet phase” as it talks with the potential donors.

There are numerous nearby properties that are accessible to the E3 Cluster and could become possible partners. Duval said that the group hopes to eventually build a community similar to Balboa Park.

Stephanie Malone is a National University journalism intern

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Encinitas groups aim to build Education Cluster