With gratitude,
Dear Friends,
We launched Ten Strands to connect the formal education system, the nonformal environmental education sector, and government agencies focused on the environment to realize a level of equity, scale, and impact in a state as large and complex as California. We achieve this by nurturing existing partnerships and forging new ones to develop programs focused on teaching and learning, school buildings and grounds, and youth engagement strategies.
We catalyze statewide change by developing resources and providing expertise, enabling counties, districts, schools, and community-based organizations to make on-the-ground progress. Our journey to advance environmental and climate literacy, and now school campuses that are vibrant centers for sustainability, is a significant shift for our small organization. We are grateful to be part of the state, national, and international communities focused on this important work.
Many more California people, organizations, and state entities now embrace this work via curriculum, campus, community, and culture entry points. Below you will learn more about the impact of Ten Strands’ local, statewide, and constituent programs and initiatives, and the resources developed in partnership with others.
I invite you to join the environmental and climate literacy movement to catalyze system-wide change across California by staying connected with us.
With immense gratitude,
As you read our program highlights below, you will see how advocacy is woven into our work to transform a system for the betterment of all California’s students
CAELI, led by Ten Strands since 2016, works statewide to create systems change to ensure all students have access to high-quality environment-based learning. Members worked throughout the year to implement projects that take environmental literacy to scale through projects and programs centered around capacity building, networking, and information sharing. These efforts helped strengthen the ecosystem and increase agency for educators and the students they serve to take collective action.
Graduated the second COE Fellowship Cohort, comprising 14 fellows from 6 COEs
The District Innovation Hub hosted its third annual meetup at the Green California Schools and Higher Education Summit last October, and received this year’s statewide Environmental Literacy Leadership award
The Taking Green Ribbon to Scale Campaign hosted the Green Strides Tour in October 2023
Seeds to Solutions Second Convening hosted at San Mateo COE
Ten Strands collaborates with partners to foster environmental literacy in core subjects, empowering teachers to use the environment as a context for learning. Through advocacy, capacity building, and network strengthening, we integrate environmental and climate literacy into TK–12 education, impacting thousands of teachers and millions of students across California.
Supports teachers with instructional materials that empower students to be environmentally literate, engaged community members prepared to act for the well-being of their family, broader community, and environment. This year the project successfully moved from the pilot phase to preparations for field testing the instructional units this fall. 
Since the initial state investment in 2021, Ten Strands and SMCOE have been seeking an additional $10 million to help California’s COEs and other professional learning providers implement these resources statewide. Although our efforts were unsuccessful in 2024, given the state’s challenging fiscal environment, we continue to engage with the State Board of Education and California Department of Education, the Department of Finance, and the legislature to make the case for the urgently needed resources in the next legislative session.
In spring 2024, Ten Strands and the California Environmental Education Foundation co-sponsored AB 3051 (Muratsuchi), a bill to create a voluntary tax contribution fund for K–12 climate change education. Although the campaign quickly gained support from 303 individuals and 76 organizations, the bill did not move forward due to the state’s budget deficit, however we will continue to make progress leveraging our networks to secure resources for public environmental education.
Ten Strands leads the data initiative, which is supported by UndauntedK12 and the University of California, Berkeley’s Data Science Discovery Program. Using an equity-informed and data-driven approach, the initiative has developed a first-in-the-nation interactive database that supports scaling environmental and climate action implementation in California’s schools.
The process of validating these pioneering datasets helped districts recognize the need to add additional board policies to advance their sustainability commitments.
Piloted in 2023, CYCP is a knowledge-to-action program that empowers youth to lead robust advocacy campaigns focused on passing environmental and climate-focused school board policies in their local school districts.
In May 2024, the Sierra Club San Francisco Bay Chapter recognized CYCP students and mentors as recipients of the Emerging Voices Award at its Centennial Celebration and Awards Ceremony.
Photos from our partnerships with the Santa Clara Unified School District Environmental Literacy and Sustainability Initiative and the Tulare County Sequoia Environmental Education Directive
Ten Strands launched a technical assistance services program to support education-focused organizations in designing and implementing environmental and climate action initiatives across the campus, curriculum, community, and overall culture of a school community. In this past year, Ten Strands partnered with:
Ten Strands wrapped up phase two of backbone support for the Santa Clara County Youth Climate Initiative, which has programs impacting over 1,000 students. The initiative’s leadership credits Ten Strands with getting the initiative to its third and final phase of the grant.
Read more about our technical assistance work: Brad Stam from Santa Clara School District and the Tulare County Summer Institute.
Outdoor learning on school campuses and in local communities is underrecognized and underutilized for its positive impact on physical and mental health, social and emotional learning, and academic learning. It is a health and learning imperative that students, especially those from California’s most vulnerable and marginalized populations, have the opportunity to spend time outdoors every week.
This past year we further positioned ourselves as a leader in the environmental and climate literacy space by launching the Campaign for Outdoor Learning. The Campaign is designed to encourage the California legislature and state agencies to enact policies and allocate funds to explicitly support our goal of having California students spend more of their school day hours learning, playing, and exploring the outdoors.
Now is the moment in California when systems change is both possible and essential. Our coalition and our consensus are growing. We can’t miss this opportunity to ensure that learning outdoors becomes a substantial part of the school day for every student every week.
Ten Strands would like to thank our funders, especially the Kathryn and Robert Riddell Fund, for catalyzing our ability to launch the exploratory phase of the Campaign, which led to an inaugural convening in fall 2024.
Click on the poster to see what a model GreenSchool might look like
Interactive graphic courtesy of Project Learning Tree®. Learn more at plt.org.
Production Manager
Chief Executive Officer
Philanthropic Engagement Manager
Instructional Designer
Partnerships Programs Specialist
Data Initiative Analyst Intern
Climate Corps Fellow
Director of Curriculum
Chief Advancement Officer
Director of Equity and Inclusion
Advancement Associate
Communications Specialist
Operations and Program Associate
Director of Client Engagement Services and Data Science
Chief Innovation Officer
Total Revenue and Support: $4,475,137
Total Program Expenses: $3,613,195
Total Program Expenses: $3,633,920
Salaries & Personnel Expenses: $397,844
Other General & Administrative: $52,939
Salaries & Personnel Expenses: $412,124
Other General & Administrative: $92,361
Change in Net Assets: 2024: ($1,329,896) 2023: $336,732
Bill Mellin
Sheila and Paul Nahi
Louise and Arthur Patterson
JaMel and Tom Perkins
$1,000 – $4,999
Hathaway Barry
Leslie Berriman and Nion McEvoy
John Buoymaster
The Keith Campbell Foundation
Lyman Casey
Jayni and Chevy Chase
Rina and Chris Chase
Gail and Hardin Coleman
Martha Conte
Karen Cowe
Paul Danielsen
Cathy and Sandy Dean
Rebecca Draper
Kate and Bill Duhamel
Kamal El-Wattar
Melinda Ellis Evers and Will Evers
Stuart Gasner
Lisa and Douglas Goldman Fund
Growald Climate Fund
Shelly Guyer and Tom Huntington
Julie Harkins
Melissa and Shepard Harris
Sabrina and Mick Hellman
Adrian Hightower
Christohper and Deirdre Hockett
Larry and Linda Howell
Suds and Lori Jain
Dagny Maidman and Molly Wood
Jack and Hilary May
Meridee Moore
Emilie and Doug Ogden
Anne and Michael Parish
Mauree Jane and Mark W. Perry
Celeste and Jim Royer
Suzanne and Will Schutte
The Stellar Blue Fund
Susan Gilmore Stone and Prescott Stone
The Laney and Pasha Thornton Foundation
Mary and Jerome Vascellaro
Carl Vogt
Kimi Waite
Brooks Walker III Family Fund
Lynn and Peter Wendell
Anonymous
Thomas Adams
Bill Andrews
Tasha and Nathaniel Bergson-Michelson
JoAnn and Jack Bertges
Eric Blasen
Philip E. Bowles
Hedy Chang and Jack Chin
Emily Courtney
Navreet Dhaliwal
Thomas Van Dyck
Erin Englund
Vitor Faroni
Carol Inkellis and Joel Gingold
Maya Gingold
Dan Gregory
Lee Hackeling
Christina Jones
Roni Jones
Kelley Le
Robert Lippincott
Linda Livers
Jilliann and Simo M’Barki
Rachele Melious
Greg Niemeyer
Alyssa Reyes
Jennifer and Marty Rigby
Donald R. Share
Patti and Richard Shavelson
Robert Sheffield
Lisa C. Van Dusen
Diran Yanikian
Andra Yeghoian
Yield Giving
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