About Clearwater’s Next Generation Legacy Project
Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, the environmental organization founded by folk singer and activist Pete Seeger over forty years ago, is making history again with its Next Generation Legacy Project, an ambitious educational initiative that is dedicated toward creating new leaders for tomorrow’s green world.
Having taken a major role in cleaning up the Hudson and fighting pollution everywhere, Clearwater truly understands that to enact important changes you have to first inspire and educate people to do so. Now, with its Next Generation Legacy Project Clearwater will be broadening its mission by bringing together school age children and young adults from our cities, suburbs and small towns to train and prepare them “to pick up the torch,” as Seeger likes to say, and create the sustainable world, with green jobs, that we all need.
To create the next generation of environmental leaders, Clearwater is developing a comprehensive educational program that focuses on many of the elements necessary for a green economy, including sustainable energy technologies, best practices in organic farming and employment opportunities in new job sectors. Presently, Clearwater is piloting a scaled-down version of this program, which continues to utilize the organization’s longstanding methodology of connecting young people to the Hudson River and its watershed through innovative, hands-on learning. The idea is that the Next Generation Legacy Project will greatly expand and increase the number of these programs to build a veritable “pipeline” of green thinkers and future environmental leaders of all ethnicities, economic and cultural backgrounds.
The Next Generation Legacy Project is divided into three phases along programmatic lines, although parts of each phase will take place concurrently.
First, the Clearwater Center for Environmental Leadership and Justice will open its doors in Fall 2009 at the former University Settlement Camp in Beacon, NY. This will also house Clearwater’s new headquarters. Beginning in June 2009, Camp Clearwater opened its doors at the Center and hosted nearly one hundred middle school and high school students in one three-week sessions, as well as provide 20 “Classroom of the Waves” sail programs for 1,000 low-income school children.
Clearwater youth education programs presently reach over 15,000 people each year. At Camp Clearwater, it is planned that several hundred students will be in the “leadership pipeline” at any time, experiencing life-changing programs at camps, seminars, retreats, demonstrations and green jobs programs. With a unique capacity to engage young people with the wonders of the environment, this first phase pulls together all of Clearwater’s extant educational programs—in the schools, on the shoreline and on the boat—and offers longer, more engaging learning opportunities. Over the years, Clearwater’s multi-day programs, like Young Women / Young Men at the Helm and Urban Outreach Internships, have had great success at encouraging young people to become environmentally-responsible citizens and to seek leadership roles in our society. The Clearwater Center promises to continue and formalize this important function for an even greater number of future leaders. It will be open to the public and is bound to become a signature destination point for thousands of visitors each year who want to learn more about our green future.
The second phase of the Next Generation Legacy Project will ensure that inner-city and under-resourced young people will have better access to Clearwater’s environmental education and leadership programs. Continuous upgrading and retro-fitting of the Clearwater Center for Environmental Leadership and Justice with green technology and a green jobs demonstration facility is included here, as well as an improvement of the riverfront facilities at Beacon harbor to create an Eco-Dock. Also, more sloop programs and Camp Clearwater scholarships are planned in this phase.
Finally, the third—and most far-reaching phase of Clearwater’s Next Generation project—will be the establishment of several Green Cities / Green Jobs Satellite Centers in Environmental Leadership along the Hudson River in partnership with local environmental and community groups. This is to ensure that targeted cities and communities, like Yonkers, Peekskill, Newburgh, Beacon, Poughkeepsie, Kingston and Albany—will have powerful connections to their waterfronts through environmental education programs that will, in turn, support “green” job development and training programs for young people from the region’s inner cities.
Another key part of this third phase is the creation of fully operational zero-carbon working waterfront facility that will have space for a harbor master, boat maintenance, crew facilities and winter port for the sloop Clearwater. Major repairs and restoration of the sloop, our famed “floating classroom,” will also be undertaken.
It is anticipated that the first phase of the Next Generation Legacy Project alone will create about 40 new jobs at the new Clearwater Center, not including numerous construction jobs.
Funding for the Next Generation Legacy Project will be attained through a mix of public and private grants, corporate contributions, individual donors and special events.
David Leonhardt, in a recent New York Times Magazine article, discusses The Race Between Education and Technology, a book written by two esteemed economists, Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz, who point out that education benefits society by leveraging its investments in other areas—medicine, infrastructure or alternative energy, to name a few. Says Leonhardt, “Education—educating more people and educating them better—appears to be the single best bet that a society can make.”
Clearwater’s longtime strategy of inspiring, educating and activating people is still a powerful formula for success. Utilizing the greatest natural resource in the region—the majestic Hudson River—Clearwater has been the grassroots model for effecting changes to protect our planet. More than ever before, we need to realize a green, sustainable future by investing in our youth and creating the next generation of environmental leaders. This is what Clearwater is now proudly committing its resources to as a part of Pete Seeger’s remarkable legacy to the human race.
