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The Go Green Initiative just keeps on growing in its journey to help the world achieve “environmental justice for every child in every school”.
The Pleasanton-based nonprofit — founded in 2002 by Jill Buck, motivated to fill the gap she observed in environmental education and evaluation at her kids’ Walnut Grove Elementary School — was one of five organizations recently awarded a share of $34 million in grants from the Biden administration to address indoor air pollution at under-served schools.
With its $7.9 million, Go Green Initiative will partner with the National School Boards Association and its state affiliates on a five-year program to improve air quality inside classrooms and other buildings at low-income and tribal schools in all 10 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regions across the country.
Buck, who remains the CEO, told me the funding will help her nonprofit and its partners work with the schools “to make a substantive, measurable impact for kids across this nation who live in communities that are the most inundated with environmental pollutants. Their growing bodies and minds need to be protected so that each child has the opportunity to reach their highest potential.”
“Outdoor air quality is regulated, and standards are enforced. But EPA has been telling us for years that the air we breathe indoors can be five to 100 times more harmful than outdoor air,” she said. “It is not regulated, and even after the pandemic, is not required to be monitored by schools. Yet indoor air quality can have a profound impact on children’s health and ability to learn.”
The groups will team up to identify which school systems they’ll support, and those districts’ leaders will then be given access to online training and in-person training that will be delivered alongside EPA representatives, according to Buck.
“Children spend so much of their day in school. It is critical for their health and academic success that schools have clean and healthy air,” EPA deputy administrator Janet McCabe said in a press release announcing the grant awards, funded through the Inflation Reduction Act, to support projects for low-income, disadvantaged or tribal schools.
“These grants will put schools in the best position to improve attendance and academic achievement, while addressing the unique and disproportionate health impacts that children in overburdened communities face as a result of indoor air quality challenges,” McCabe added.
The other awardees announced on Aug. 22 by the EPA were the University of Utah, the American Lung Association, the New York State Department of Health and Health Research, Inc. and the U.S. Green Building Council’s Center for Green Schools.
To see a Tri-Valley nonprofit forged from grassroots beginnings on a list with institutions of such size and scope is a true testament to Buck and her team.
Go Green Initiative’s story is one many in Pleasanton are familiar with, one we’ve told a number of times over the years.
Buck formed the organization in 2002 after what she witnessed — or better put, what she didn’t — as a PTA volunteer in Pleasanton schools when it came to environmental awareness and action. She was spurred by her background as a Navy officer whose experience included educating service members about then-new federal recycling mandates.
“The main thing I felt was such a glaring deficiency was the lack of recycling,” Buck told the Weekly in an interview after we presented her with our 2017 Tri-Valley Heroes: Environmental Stewardship Award. “We were teaching 18-year-old sailors to do it and it was beyond me why we weren’t teaching elementary school students to do it at the time.”
From those early days focused on Pleasanton, Go Green Initiative now has more than 3,500 schools registered in its programming, with over 2.5 million students and 190,000 teachers represented in all 50 U.S. states and nearly 75 countries.
Its five primary programs are sustainability planning, utility analysis and reduction, student internships, its Local Leaders of the 21st Century and the GGI Academy.
“Throughout our 22-year history, the Go Green Initiative has worked to protect children’s health from environmental toxins at school – this includes indoor air quality, drinking water quality and food quality,” Buck told me in a series of emails over the past week or so (including me possibly interrupting her birthday).
“I’ve been fortunate to be a speaker at many state and national conferences where I’ve been able to introduce people to the work the GGI does, and our network continues to expand each year,” she added.
That significant growth elsewhere has unfortunately been coupled with a bit of contraction closer to home though.
“We had a contract to work with Pleasanton Unified last school year, but with budget cuts, we no longer have that funding,” Buck said. “We would like to continue giving teacher mini-grants and school incentives for tracking their waste, but without local donors we won’t be able to offer those programs in PUSD this school year.”
Learn more about the nonprofit at gogreeninitiative.org.
Editor’s note: Jeremy Walsh is the editorial director for the Embarcadero Media Foundation’s East Bay Division. His “What a Week” column is a recurring feature in the Pleasanton Weekly, Livermore Vine and DanvilleSanRamon.com.
