Insurance Fund Helps To Plant Seeds Of Grass Roots Activism, Recruit Urban Youth Leaders

The Environmental Leadership Program (ELP) at The University of California at Berkeley's College of Natural Resources is helping a more diverse mix of students make the connection between the environment and academic and professional careers. This is, in part, due to support from The Insurance Industry Charitable Fund (IICF), a major sponsor program.

Through combined efforts by UC Berkeley faculty, students, community organizations and public agencies on Bay Area environmental projects, the intensive academic program targets and recruits underrepresented Bay Area elementary, high school and community college students. Among the program's goals are helping these students envision the wide range of opportunities in the environmental sciences and encouraging them to look at the environmental field as a viable career choice.

Through donations from various insurance companies over the last two years, the IICF has enabled an ongoing summer program to expand the breadth and depth considerably by funding a half-time program coordinator, adding faculty participation and increasing community interaction and other partnerships for the college's efforts.

"When we talk about the average UC Berkeley student, we're talking about a high achiever who may be armed with a 4.0 GPA and various community involvement projects," said Dana Harvey, program coordinator for the ELP. "With this caliber of students applying, it is easy to be confident that we'll have remarkable students entering our program. Sometimes, however, we forget the growing need to reach out to those other remarkable students—with limited resources to compete—who have interest in environmental sciences."

The Environmental Leadership Program visionaries were leaders in university outreach. ELP was developed before the Berkeley Pledge outreach program umbrella instituted in 1995 by former UC Berkeley Chancellor Chang-Lin Tien in response to elimination of affirmative action programs. ELP works in collaboration with the Berkeley Pledge outreach programs through the Berkeley Academy collaborative to strengthen and broaden their program reach. UC Berkeley's outreach effort was recognized by US Secretary of Education, Richard Riley, in February, when he praised Berkeley's outreach as a model of education partnerships between universities and public schools.

"If we can give our disadvantaged youth a clear vision, a road map for success starting in K-12, continuing through community college and resulting in their applying to universities such as Cal, we can guide our future leaders and educators to change the faces of their communities," commented Harvey. "We are grateful to our financial sponsor, the Insurance Industry Charitable Fund, for their commitment to help us make this happen."

"We are proud to sponsor the College of Natural Resources at UC Berkeley in its innovative efforts to nurture promising students, foster their pride in their own ability to succeed and to make a difference in the education and lives of these students in our Bay Area communities," said Karen Chin, executive vice president of the IICF. Future community interaction efforts being developed by the College of Natural Resources include continued partnering with Team Oakland's "We Mean Clean" program developed by Mayor Elihu Harris, as well as the addition of an ELP course, offered through the Center for Science Excellence at Contra Costa Community College. CNR is also developing an internship program offered to all students who participate in the ELP.

The IICF's goals are to encourage responsible insurance industry corporate citizenship, enabling contributors to enhance their giving by directing a portion or all of their charitable funds through the IICF. Its grant-making arm focuses on four areas central to its vision, including educational programs. The IICF is inaugurating IICF Bridge Week, where hundreds of insurance industry professionals will donate 5,000 hours of their time to worthy charitable projects as a way of "bridging" to the community. The first annual IICF Bridge Week will run from October 17 through October 25, 1998.