Gene Haas Foundation donates $25,000 to SEEAG.

The Gene Haas Foundation has made a $25,000 grant award to Students for Eco-Education and Agriculture (SEEAG) to support SEEAG’s STEM Career Pathways in Agriculture programs. The programs are provided at no cost to schools and are designed to teach middle and high school students about technology and science-driven agricultural careers. 

SEEAG staff members give presentations at schools throughout Ventura County providing an overview of agriculture, ag career opportunities and the latest technologies and innovations that are impacting the industry. Online presentations are also available. 

“Most of us don’t think of agriculture as a cutting-edge industry, but science and technology play a key role in producing the huge quantities of food needed to feed a hungry world,” says Mary Maranville, SEEAG founder and CEO. “SEEAG educates, inspires and empowers local students to consider careers in agriculture. The generous Haas Foundation donation will help SEEAG spread the word about the myriad of ag career opportunities including those right here in Ventura County.” 

Science, technology and math-based ag careers include horticulture, food safety, biology, seed and pollination science, food chain management, accounting, industrial engineering and farm administration. 

“By supporting organizations such as SEEAG and their focus on youth STEM programs, we understand this is the first step in educating and empowering our youth to a future in manufacturing careers,” says Kathy Looman, director of education and Gene Haas Centers naming rights. “In 2021, the Gene Haas Foundation provided more than $18.5 million in grants towards education and another $3 million to the communities Haas businesses are located. Bringing the total grants awarded since inception to about 4,500 organizations and schools to more than $120 million. We are committed to continuously supporting these same schools and organizations as well as adding additional organizations and schools annually.” 

For more information about SEEAG’s career pathways programs and to sign up for a presentation, go to https://www.seeag.org/steamcareersinag or contact Seth Wilmoth, program educator, at [email protected]. 

 Founded in 2008, Students for Eco-Education and Agriculture (SEEAG) is a nonprofit organization that aims to help young students understand the origins of their food by bridging the gap between agriculture and consumption through its agricultural education programming. SEEAG’s “The Farm Lab” program based in Ventura County teaches schoolchildren about the origins of their food and the importance of local farmland by providing schools with classroom agricultural education and free field trips to farms. Through this and other SEEAG programs, over 60,000 elementary school students in Central and Southern California have increased their understanding of the food journey. For more information, visit www.seeag.org or email Mary Maranville at [email protected]. 

The Gene Haas Foundation was established in 1999, by Haas Automation, Inc., Founder and CEO Gene Haas, For more information visit https://ghaasfoundation.org.

Local students’ innovation helps county’s homeless population. Photos by Patricia Schallert

A group of enterprising 7th and 8th graders from Cabrillo Middle School have partnered with Food Share Ventura County in a project designed to make life a little easier for the county’s unhoused population but that could have an impact far beyond.

The Rusty Sailors robotics created a tote bag that converts to a backpack. They distributed the bags on Monday, April 11, at The River Community Church, 859 E Santa Clara St. The church is under the direction of Jim Duran, The River Community’s pastor.

Saanvi Joshi, Hendrix Lowder, Jane Kim, Jude Curtis, Izzy Quiroz, Maddie Wicks, Maverick Cheatham, and Aarana Khanavkar, all members of the school’s “Rusty Sailors” Robotics Club, are participating in the 2021-2022 season, CARGO CONNECTSM, FIRST® LEGO® League Innovation Project, to identify a problem related to improving the transportation journey of products, and design a new piece of technology or improve an existing one. FIRST® empowers students ages 9-16 to explore what it means to be an innovator, finding solutions to today’s societal problems that could impact the world for generations to come.

The Rusty Sailors visited Food Share last year to get a better understanding of how a food bank works and learned about Food Share’s “Kitchen-Free” program that provides bagged, nutritious, no-cook food for people without access to a kitchen. Food Share has distributed 24,000 kitchen free bags to date through their network of 190 pantry partners.

Following the field trip, Laurie Lowder, one of the club’s coaches, witnessed two men on bikes struggling to carry the branded Food Share bags and the experience inspired the children to think of ways to improve the design to make them easier to transport. The result is an ingenious and inexpensive modification that turns it into a backpack.

Speaking about the innovative design, Hendrix Lowder, 13, said, “We got empty bags from Food Share so we could experiment with ways to make them better. After our team developed a prototype, we got a grant to make one hundred bags so that we can hand them out to people who are homeless. We’ve also added a QR code to the bags linked to a survey for people to tell us what they think and to get suggestions for improvements. It’s very exciting to be able to see the project all the way through to the product design stage.”

The design has already caught the eye of the FIRST® project judges. The Rusty Sailors won the Global Innovation Award nomination for the Southern California Regionals in December. Teams nominated for their outstanding solutions could advance to the 2022 FIRST LEGO League Global Innovation Award presented by Qualcomm to attend workshops with innovation and industry experts.

An estimated 1 in 6 people in Ventura County experiences food insecurity, meaning that they are without reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, nutritious food.

Before the pandemic, many of the families Food Share served would need supplemental food perhaps two-three times a year.

Food Share is serving approximately double the number of people being served pre-pandemic. The latest figure (total for 2021) is a little over 190,000 unduplicated people based on FreshTrak data. However, this figure does not include people attending emergency drive-thru distributions, some of our programs, including Community Markets, or farmworkers receiving food at field distributions.

For all the latest information on where to find food, how to volunteer, and how you can support Food Share with a monetary donation visit: www.foodshare.com

Don and Marcy Ornales, Kenny Slaught: Dream Foundation’s Board Chair
And Eva Rhodes Board Member. Photo by Patricia Schallert

On March 28, Ventura local Marcy Ornelas, her husband Donald and their fourteen-year-old daughter, Shoshanna were off to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveand, Ohio, on a final dream family trip thanks to the Dream Foundation, the only national dream-granting organization for terminally-ill adults.

Music has always been a positive constant in Marcy’s life. “I can leave somewhere in a terrible mood, put my radio on as I drive, and after a few songs, my stress melts off and I can go home feeling good and can be a better wife and mother. Music has always been there for me.”

Rock & Roll is Marcy’s favorite. She is often up late at night watching one of her favorite concerts and even falls asleep to the comforting sounds of the guitar and snare drum. While Marcy doesn’t sing or play and instrument, she always tells people that she “plays a mean radio”.

Diagnosed with end-stage breast cancer that has recently spread to her organs, Marcy asked the Dream Foundation to help with a special family trip to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio. Donald and Shoshanna will join Marcy on a train trip from Ventura, California to Cleveland, Ohio.

“I love trains. You can look at each other face to face, play games and talk.”  The Dream Foundation also gave Marcy and her family a basket full of goodies for the train and they have dinners available while they travel.

Hosts from AirBnB have generously donated a two-night stay in the city for the family and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame will welcomed the family on April 6. It was a day which will inevitable create memories that will last a lifetime for the family.

Kenny Laugh, Dream Foundation’s Board Chair and Eve Rhodes, one of the foundation’s newest Board Members hosted the Dream Delivery on March 28 at Marcy’s home in Ventura to celebrate her life and presented her everything for the family’s trip, including a rental car, a scooter while at the Hall of Fame, t-shirts, snacks for the train and dark chocolate.

The Dream Foundation , the only national dream-granting organization for terminally-ill adults fulfills final dreams that provide inspiration, comfort and closure at the end of life. With the support of a nationwide network of volunteers, hospices, health care organizations and committed donors.

Dream Foundation has given life to more than 33,000 final dreams since being founded in 1994. Dream Foundation receives no state or federal funding and relies solely on private donations. To support the mission of the Dream Foundation, please visit DreamFoundation.org/donate.

Food scraps should be bagged and placed in your green waste cart.

by Jill Sarick Santos

Composting vegetable scraps instead of landfilling them is one tiny step in the right direction to help lessen the ramifications from climate change. It is easy to do. It does not cost anything extra. And you could be saving the world.

But there are still folks who think it is a waste of their time. They say it is just one more unnecessary governmental regulation that is killing California.

Regardless of whether you believe that climate change is really happening or hesitate to name who or what is the primary contributor, the obvious fact remains that weather patterns have changed dramatically over the last decade. Those of us in the field of environmental protection, conservation, forestry or agriculture, have been talking about this sort of stuff for years.

It does not matter what or who is responsible or why and how it got so bad so quickly, it matters that you stop whatever it is you are doing right now and take a good look around you. Listen, look, observe. What is different? Can you spot or identify 5 differences in the last decade? Last five years? Last year?

As our busy lives move in an ever-busier pace, we might fail to recognize obvious signs that the climate is indeed changing. For example, in the last ten years, droughts in Southern California have been longer, more extreme and occur in more frequent intervals than in the last twenty years. We have seen more record-breaking high temperatures in the last decade than many previous. And those groups of people mass migrating from their homeland to wealthier, more developed places; that’s climate change influenced without question. The real question is, what can one person really do to stop something so overwhelming? Starting with placing your food scraps in the organics cart so that it will be composted instead of becoming greenhouse-producing-methane-gas seems like a no brainer to me.

The obvious and now essentially required first step is to ensure that food scraps, including things like peels, pieces, stems, shells, bones, and sauces, dairy, meat, fruit and vegetables, and food soiled paper should be bagged (in any preferably plastic bag) and placed in your green waste cart, now called the organics cart. If you are a commercial business or live in a multi-family residential property without a curbside cart, be sure to check with your city’s environmental division to comply with the regulations.

So, the next time you see a neighbor ranting about the city’s new food waste program on social media, tell them to chill out and share this article. If each one of us does our little part, that is seven billion little parts all working together to save the one and only place we call home: Earth.

Team 4414: HighTide is an industry-based robotics team located in Ventura.

After 2 canceled seasons due to COVID, competitive robotics is back, and with that, so is Team 4414: HighTide. They are riding high on back to back wins at Hueneme Port and Ventura County Regionals. Additionally, they earned awards in Quality and Autonomous.

Team 4414: HighTide is an industry-based robotics team located in Ventura. Student participants range from grades 9 – 12 and attend school at Buena, El Camino, Foothill or Ventura High. Students learn career-oriented skills in engineering, design, mathematics, computer science, and are inspired by industry professional mentors. Michael Sessa of Sessa MFG (where the team trains) said, “Team 4414 HighTide is so dedicated and driven to excellence in everything they do. We are so lucky to have such great students along with amazing mentors.”

This year’s Game sees two alliances competing to process cargo and score it into the hub. The match ends with robots racing to engage with their hangar to prepare for transport. Alliances are made up of 3 robot teams that work together to earn the highest score. While the competition is intense, it is built on the values of professionalism, cooperation, kindness, and more. 

Bryce Taylor said, “The team has put in countless hours of prototyping, design, manufacturing, coding and more. As a member of the drive team, the pressure to execute is even greater and I’m glad our practice paid off. We were able to perform at a high level and take full advantage of the robot’s potential.” Driver Zach Shew said of his experience, “Driving is exciting, fun and unpredictable,” while Aadhya Bavkar said, ““It was stressful at times, but it felt amazing to share a victory with the whole team and contribute to our overall success.”

Beside having a mechanically sound, well driven robot with excellent software, strong strategy and data collection is crucial to winning events. Anshul Bajaj said, “Understanding your opponent’s and most importantly, your teammate’s ability is essential to performing at the highest level. Using my semi-automated scouting app, Team 4414 students recorded and collected performance data for the teams we competed with. These metrics informed our strategy which elevated our overall competitiveness.”

Mentor JJ Sessa congratulated the team on their back to back wins and said, “Thank you to all our sponsors, friends and family for your support. We are looking forward to competing at Aerospace Valley and at the World competition in Houston next month.”

For more information: www.team4414.com