BEACHES IN TROUBLE KIDS THERE ON THE DOUBLE!!!!!!

In perhaps its most ambitious environmental undertaking to date, the STAR ECO Station the Wishtoyo Foundation and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) in partnership with the Oxnard School District created a wonderful learning opportunity and invited over 1,600 STAR Oxnard Elementary students to the 8,000-year-old-Native American Chumash Village in Malibu at Nicholas Canyon County Beach.

It was a fun-filled morning of marine education and exploration that took place in celebration of the National Children’s World Ocean Day celebration! Students rotated through a variety of environmental and cultural workshops run by STAR ECO Station Culver City staff; Mati Waiya, Founder and Executive Director of the Wishtoyo Foundation; and environmental agency NOAA.

These students are in love with the sea and the animals that live in it, “ said David Bloom, Conservation Education Corps volunteer with NOAA. “We teach them about ecosystems-how living and nonliving things work together to create a balance in nature.”

It was the first visit to the Malibu Beach for Melissa Rivera, 8, a third-grade student at Lemonwood School in Oxnard. “I’ve been learning about the Indians and got to touch the baby alligators,” she said. I’ve also learned we shouldn’t throw trash in the ocean and that we should recycle.”

For many of these children, it was their first opportunity to explore our beaches, as many come from migrate farming families and communities and do not have the opportunity to participate in extracurricular activities such as this.

Katiana Bozzi, co-founder and educational outreach director of the STAR ECO Station, said the organization’s goal is to help young students become more familiar with the “entire environment.”

This was surely a day that these young students will remember forever; the first time they went to the beach!