I would love to see iNat and Cal Academy expand outreach efforts in their own backyard. I grew up in the Oakland public school system and I feel confident in saying there is room for improvement in bridging the gap between the Black and science communities worldwide, nationwide, statewide, but also within a stone’s throw from headquarters.
I love iNat. I LOVE it. I love CalAcademy. Always have. Is it incumbent on schools and teachers to decide to organize field trips to the Academy and such? Probably. I used to work for the Oakland Zoo and one of my favorite programs they offer is the ZooMobile, where they’ll send a van out with some animals and an education specialist gives a little session for the kids. Apologies if I’m wrong, but after a quick perusal of their site, I don’t see a similar thing on offer from CalAcademy.
As iNat grows, its responsibility to its physical local community probably should, too. I know iNat already partners with teachers around the globe to introduce students to nature, and I think that’s fantastic (regardless of how much of a pain it might be to ID the results ;) ). I graduated from Oakland Tech, and at the time several different specialized programs were offered by the school termed “academies.” I don’t know what the specific lineup looks like now, but back then we had academies for Health, Engineering, Green, and BioTech. How great would it be if CalAcademy more directly lent their expertise in developing and supporting similar programs at Tech and other Bay Area schools?
The outdoors should be a great way to take a break from human society every once in a while, and a lot of kids in Oakland don’t necessarily get that chance. If that exposure isn’t coming from their family or friends or school, how are they going to get it? A lot of those kids would benefit immensely, whether using it as an escape, a leg up in the industry, or any of the other myriad benefits that come from learning and interacting with nature. I know partnerships with public schools might not be as lucrative as ones with private schools, but we as public school students have never been less deserving of the opportunity than the ones whose parents could afford to send them to private school.
And to link back to the hiring theme, opening lines of communication with established community organizations like The Greenlining Institute, among others. I am aware of the Academy’s partnerships with The Arc, Access SFUSD, Sunset and Larkin youth services, and Museums4Inclusion and I think those are all great. However, this discussion is explicitly about supporting Black and other underrepresented communities, and I think expanding the Academy and iNat’s reach to the Blacker parts of the Bay would be a good step. I know times were very different for iNaturalist back then, but I would have loved to have been introduced to it when I was in high school and I can imagine other “me’s” are probably wandering around Oakland today wondering what bird they just saw.
I fully believe that any benefits provided to the community from increased local outreach will work both ways. I know that the people I’m talking about aren’t the ones with the deepest pockets, but they’re the ones who have been born and raised here and will still be around when the collapses of the tech and housing bubbles see an exodus of wealthy professionals from the Bay Area. They matter now, and they’ll certainly matter then, too. I’m doing my darnedest to finish up my ecological engineering master’s so I can come back to Oakland and start trying to work on bridging the Black-green gap myself. It’s wider than it should be right now, and I think CAS and iNat are uniquely and powerfully positioned to start enacting some real and positive change.