My Nonprofit Reviews
agzack1
Review for Youth Environmental Alliance Inc, Davie, FL, USA
YEA is a vibrant organization that empowers young people from all backgrounds to make positive environmental changes. In my personal experience, I have worked with kids on YEA teams to plant sea oats, repopulating over 95% of the dunes along the eroding beach in Lauderdale by the Sea. Kids learned to follow directions, learned about the plants and their needs, what the plants would look like when they're mature -- as well as the positive impact of the sea oats on sand retention in times of storms, especially hurricanes. I met kids who only lived a few miles from the ocean but had never been there. I also met kids who had never seen a shovel and didn't know how to dig :((
On another project, I worked with a group of school kids and adult volunteers to plant mangroves along the shoreline in a tidal area. This involved going knee-deep into the water, digging down in the sand, and planting a baby mangrove. After that, you had to reach back down to the base of the plant to add a rock or two to help ensure that the tide did not wash away the new planting. Going into the water like this was scary for most of the kids -- but they did it and were excited to do more.
I believe so much in this organization and its leadership that I became a volunteer grant writer to help add more federal, state, and local monies to support the effort. YEA is uniquely excellent at integrating schools, corporations, and other groups into their programs -- a very diverse audience. YEA also targets those kids who take breakfast and/or lunch at school, a way to target underserved populations in the area. Other projects like tree planting, in-school STEM classes, and installing pollinator and food gardens at schools are all part of their work.
I give YEA the highest rating! I applaud their good work, their persistence through COVID-19, their extensive reach, and their ability to bring groups (old, young, corporate, private, in school, and in the community) as willing hands and interested learners together. These are our future caretakers of the earth.
