Edmonds College
PAE-19: Community Sustainability Partnerships

Through the Center for Service-Learning, the college has established formal connections with over 100 different community partners (non-profits, governments, tribes, and businesses). The Learn and Serve Environmental Anthropology Field (LEAF) School has partnered with the City of Lynnwood and Snohomish Tribe of Indians and has gained sponsorships from Ivar's Clam House and REI to restore a local neighborhood park and develop an ethnobotanical garden. Now called the Gold Park Stolja Ali Ethnobotanical Garden, this park has given land to the Snohomish Tribe of Indians and has provided the community with a safe place to recreate. Students use this land as an outdoor classroom as well. Another partnership for the LEAF School is with Snohomish County Public Works in a wildlife tracking and monitoring project of four wildlife corridor sites in Snohomish County. The data collected is used to assess the usage of wildlife around newly constructed wildlife passage structures. The LEAF School also partners with the I-90 Bridges Coalition Project and Cascade Citizen's Wildlife Monitoring Project and collaborates with Conservation Northwest and Wilderness Awareness School to set up remote cameras to document the presence of rare carnivores in the Cascades. We also have a long term partnership with the Puget Soundkeeper Alliance to take students out on kayaks on Lake Union in Seattle to clean-up the shores of the lake, and learn about water issues. One of our Horticulture professors also worked with Olivia Park Elementary School to develop and implement an organic garden for their community and brings students to the weekly work parties. The Center for Service-Learning also has a long-term partnership with People For Puget Sound (now a program of Washington Environmental Council) to support Puget Sound restoration activities and provide service-learning student volunteer assistance.

http://www.edcc.edu/leaf