Sarah Calderon
Workforce Development Director, Groundwork Richmond
President of Groundwork USA’s Board of Directors
Recorded on Dec 6, 2023, Renée Mazurek, Resilient Communities Manager for River Network and team member of the Urban Waters Learning Network, interviews Sarah Calderon from Groundwork Richmond.
Listen to the full interview or read the full transcript below.
Note: The transcript has been edited for clarity. Links to resources from the conversation are also included.
Transcript
00:00:04 Renée Mazurek
Hi and welcome to Urban Waters Speak from the Urban Waters Learning Network where we hear from network members in their own voice. To highlight our members, we host conversations with water practitioners working to conserve, restore and revitalize America’s urban waterways. We’re glad you’re here.
I’m Renée Mazurek, Resilient Communities Manager for River Network and Urban Waters team member. For this conversation, I had the great pleasure of speaking with Sarah Calderon on December 6th, 2023 and what a great way to round out the year. I’m happy to be able to share it with you in this new year of 2024.
Our conversation focuses mostly on urban forestry, but Sarah highlights the intersections of her work with social justice, fundraising, community engagement partnerships as well as workforce development and job placement. Wow! While we try to keep these recordings under 30 minutes, this one is a little bit longer because there are many important insights shared. Without further ado, I introduce you to Sarah from Richmond, CA, a long time member of the Groundwork Trust and current board member of Groundwork USA, let’s jump into the conversation, and I’ll let Sarah take it from there.
00:01:28 Renée Mazurek
Hi, Sarah. Welcome. Thanks for joining us today. Can you introduce yourself and share a little bit more about your different roles at Groundwork?
00:01:39 Sarah Calderon
Thanks, Renee. Yeah, my name is Sarah Calderon. Currently, I’m the workforce director at Groundwork Richmond. I started at Groundwork in 2012. I was the executive director of Groundwork Richmond. We became a trust in 2010, so I was technically the second executive director, and I worked at Groundwork until 2018, when I stepped down to retire. And then I joined the Groundwork Richmond board. And so I was on the Board of directors when the pandemic hit, and I wrote a proposal for a workforce project. At that time during the pandemic, we didn’t really have anyone to run the project. So I decided that I would come back on board to direct that project and here I am still at Groundwork Richmond all these years later.
00:02:35 Renée Mazurek
That’s amazing. And I know you’re also the current board chair for Groundwork USA.
00:02:42 Sarah Calderon
Ohh yes, so a couple of times during my tenure as the Groundwork Richmond Executive Director, I was asked to join the Groundwork USA Board of Directors. Of course, I didn’t have a lot of time running a nonprofit, and so I passed. Eventually I was on the Groundwork Richmond board, and I was asked again and I said, “well, perhaps when I step off the groundwork Richmond board, I’ll consider it.”
And then, sure enough, when Heather McMann became CEO, she asked would I consider joining the board. And I said, well, I’m just wrapping up my tenure at Groundwork Richmond, and I would love to join the board. Earlier this year, I joined as a board member and in April was elected as board President.
00:03:34 Renée Mazurek
I’m sure that they are glad to have your leadership and experience in the Groundwork network. So how did you personally come into this work?
00:03:44 Sarah Calderon
I actually did not have an extensive background in the environment. My background is primarily in working with nonprofits and organizational development, and I’ve worked with various nonprofits throughout the Bay Area and throughout the state of California as well as nationally in conflict resolution…Youth groups, domestic violence and housing.
Eventually I tired of traveling the country and decided I would look more closely in Richmond. I live in Richmond and so I decided, well, let’s see what’s going on in Richmond. And I saw the job opening at Groundwork Richmond and I applied. Sure enough, they were looking for somebody that had extensive background in fund development and I come with a background in fund development having raised millions of dollars for various organizations. I was pretty upfront with them letting them know, you know, “I’m for the environment, I love the outdoors, but I’ve not been in this field.”
And they said, “We need somebody that’s doing organizational development and fund development.”
So I was hired. From there, you know, we grew a very small organization with $100,000 budget to over $1,000,000.
00:05:05 Renée Mazurek
That’s amazing. And I just have to say like, wow, what a what a background! It’s like the whole picture that you bring to the work I’m sure is really important for your organization. But for the overall work of Groundwork USA.
00:05:21 Sarah Calderon
Yeah, I think the common thread for me is really around social justice. And so most of the organizations that I work with and for represent interests in helping immigrant populations, impoverished populations, communities of color LGBTQ populations. That’s been my background and so, again, it was a natural fit in terms of social justice. Some of the work that we do in the environment around environmental justice issues really spoke to me. And so from that perspective, it was a great match because the work that I was doing in the other areas of my previous experience and expertise was similar along those lines, and so that was my focus.
00:06:09 Renée Mazurek
Thank you for that. I do want to shift gears a little bit, because I know Groundwork Richmond has a really strong history in doing urban forestry work. I first want to get a little bit of a sense for “how did you get into that work in the first place?” And then maybe we can make the connection to how urban forestry is so important to the overall health of watersheds.
00:06:33 Sarah Calderon
Absolutely. So when I arrived at Groundwork Richmond, the board chair had just recently applied for a CAL FIRE Grant to expand the urban forestry in Richmond. The neighborhoods in which we focused on were the most impoverished neighborhoods in Richmond, the most under tree-ed neighborhoods in Richmond. She had drafted a proposal, and I came in and together we submitted the proposal and we received our very first grant—eventually of about 10 CAL FIRE grants—to fund the urban forestry to increase the tree canopy in those neighborhoods. It was one of several projects that we had, for primarily the Green Team—a youth program and urban greening program—to work on brownfields and then, urban forestry. But with that initial project, we became the organization to work and partner with the City of Richmond as the chief Urban Forestry Administrator.
Our city has a modest budget for this work. And so they basically contract out some of the work. As a partner to the City of Richmond, we basically co-applied with the city for this first urban forestry project. And in that partnership, we were able to develop this work with the city. The city has an Urban Greening Master Plan with some goals through 2027 to increase the tree canopy in neighborhoods that surround the Richmond Greenway, which is in South Central Richmond in some of the most impoverished neighborhoods impacted by not only poverty, but it’s centrally located where there are refineries, the port freeways, and historically has been not only underserved in terms of green spaces, but lack of trees and most impacted by pollution.
Anyway, that’s Groundwork’s focus, and we’ve increased that focus every year. And from that point on, I started to apply to various state agencies for additional funding and we’ve grown our project now having planted more than 3000 trees in those neighborhoods.
00:08:54 Renée Mazurek
Yeah, that’s great. And how do you see that urban forestry is beneficial to the overall health of the watershed?
00:09:03 Sarah Calderon
Yeah. So clearly, you know, we’re surrounded by creeks and bays, you know, San Francisco Bay and San Pablo Bay here. The urban forestry helps with stormwater control. It filters the pollutants that get out into our waterways. Additionally, it helps with soil erosion, prevent soil erosion. And then for us here in the Bay Area it also increases food for our wildlife habitat. Those are just some of the reasons that the urban forest really supports our local watershed.
We also partner with The Watershed Project here in the Bay Area who helps to educate our communities. They have a big school program where they talk about the watersheds, and they partner with us to also talk about the importance of trees in helping stormwater and preventing pollution into our waterways.
00:10:00 Renée Mazurek
That’s great. And that just kind of brings up for me too about, you know, community engagement and the importance of engaging the community around this. I’m wondering how the community feels about the tree plantings and the greening projects that are happening all around them.
00:10:18 Sarah Calderon
Yeah… Groundwork USA launched a project sometime back around community engagement to strengthen, you know, some of the trusts and our work around community engagement. I think a lot of nonprofits, how they operate is that they see a problem and then create a solution and it becomes prescriptive. And our approach has been a little bit different than that. We recognize that folks have been prescribed solutions their whole lives. And so we attend the neighborhood council meetings, we have events, we do canvassing neighborhoods, we go door to door.
Many people historically don’t like trees in front of their houses because they have to sweep up leaves. But then we give them options around some of that. More and more, as we start to address climate change, we bring some of that information. Many people aren’t necessarily aware or concerned about climate change, and so we bring out the issues in terms of health disparities and some of the impacts that they personally see. When we start to talk about some of those disparities in our neighborhoods, some of the seniors…we have a high concentration of folks that have asthma and heart conditions. And when you start to have those dialogues, they get it. And then they start to see that perhaps they do want to participate in having a tree and adopting a tree. We have an Adopt-a-Tree program in partnership with the city.
But I think what’s really critical around community engagement is that we hold a series of events on various holidays. Communities come out, they help us plant trees, they see the community being involved…all the way from young people to seniors. That’s exciting for us and we educate them along the way. We provide information to them at their level, not just scientific. Because we partner with scientists who bring this information at a scientific level and aren’t relatable to the people. And so we’re interested in engaging folks and asking them what is it that would help benefit their neighborhoods around not only tree planting, but air quality… all of these issues.
00:12:27 Renée Mazurek
Yeah, that’s amazing. I know that there’s a lot of money going into urban forestry and I think that’s an important lesson for a lot of people to consider as they’re doing this work.
I want to ask, you know, what are some lessons that you’ve learned along the way in doing this? Or were there some challenges that you had to overcome?
00:12:46 Sarah Calderon
Yeah, there definitely are. Until this year, California was in a drought. And we have these big initiatives to plant trees. The state allows, you know, some of our funders allow for a 10% loss of trees, but due to the drought, we actually were losing many more. And so while the grants are for tree planting, there’s not a lot of funding for maintenance. Having to replace those trees to make sure that we are in fact expanding the tree canopy is really critical. Some of the lessons that we’ve learned are: in the neighborhoods where we’re located, the soil is not always susceptible to some of the plants. The species that we want.
Additionally, many folks are really interested that we plant native species and there are scientific reasons why that isn’t always possible, including the soil composition. Because of some of those challenges, people don’t understand some of the species that are in the urban greening master plan that have been selected by landscape architects in partnership with the city.
When we go do the Adopt-a-Tree project, and we ask neighbors if they want a tree, some people will ask us, will we plant fruit trees? But we don’t plant fruit trees. There are other organizations that do that. But we plant a variety of trees and we do try to plant natives where appropriate. But there’s some trees—the pines—that don’t take off here…That’s one of the lessons learned in trying to work with the community. Again, we’re not trying to be prescriptive at the same time we’re trying to engage them and give them solutions that make them happy as well.
Those are mostly the lessons. I think partnership is a really huge lesson, not only partnership with the city, but the community as well as other nonprofits. It is another lesson. I don’t think that you can do this work alone. And many nonprofits operate in silos. I think that for me, I really operate very collaboratively, and I think organizations have a better chance of succeeding if they work collaboratively.
00:15:04 Renée Mazurek
I I totally agree. Partnerships are so important. I think a lot of people would probably be curious about how you establish a good trusting long term relationship with say the government, the local government or an agency. Do you have any stories to share around that?
00:15:24 Sarah Calderon
Yeah, actually. So one of my success stories here, one of our success stories revolves around just such a partnership. Groundwork Richmond is part of Friends of the Richmond Greenway, one of 17 nonprofit organizations that were interested in helping develop the three and a half mile bicycle path and walkway across those very neighborhoods I was talking about, [those] most impacted by these injustices, these environmental issues.
In 2016 or so, one of the partners in Friends of the Richmond Greenway wrote a grant with the City of Richmond to develop a seven and a half acre park in the middle of this Greenway. One of the things that happened was: this was a first time effort by the city to partner with the Friends of the Richmond Greenway to develop this park. So this park was developed by the community, not only the nonprofits, but the residents…And to pay the residents to do the work in developing this park.
It was a challenge because it was a large collaborative and—talk about trust! We had to come together, several meetings. We had to have a facilitator facilitate a dialogue around what were the priorities, not only for the organizations, but then each organization had their target population they were bringing into the fold, including hiring the folks to develop this project. We, of course, ran into some conflict along the way prior to groundbreaking.
One of the things that happened is: the city called us in and said, look, we’ve given you an opportunity here to have this project be developed by not only the nonprofits, but by the community itself for the first time, a $5,000,000 park designed by the community. We would hire the contractors that would work on and and we would hire employees from within those disadvantaged neighborhoods.
But we were called in because we were a mess. Basically the city said you have two weeks to decide if you can do this. Otherwise we’ll take this project back and we’ll do our prescriptive playground scenario. So we really pulled together and in fact developed that project.
One of the things…my background also is…I’m a mediator. I have a conflict resolution background and so I was brought in by the chair of my board into the project. Several of the organizations adopted the spot along the Greenway and that particular spot area where the Unity Park was built was not Groundwork Richmond’s adopted spot, however, we were part of Friends of the Richmond Greenway. So I came in with Groundwork to bring those skills to the table, and we were able to work through that. And ultimately we ended up with what’s now probably a $7,000,000 park which has gardens, trees, murals, playground, dirt bike fields even…
I think when we circle back to what does it mean to partner and build trust, that was an example of the three to four year project where working with the same folks who have the same interest, motivation and passion for the work built that trust. It’s interesting because even though all of us are interested in the Richmond Greenway, the 17 organizations, we all have a slightly different priority in terms of our project. However, what we all do share is the same passion for working within our communities, particularly around those communities that have the challenges that I described earlier.
00:19:06 Renée Mazurek
Thank you for sharing that. That’s amazing. And a two week deadline, that sounds a little bit stressful; but you pulled it together. I I think that Urban Waters has written an impact story previously on Unity Park. So I’ll make sure to include that. [Find that story here: Groundwork Richmond: Greening the Urban Landscape] I remember researching it before and being very impressed.
I do want to shift a little bit because I want to talk to you about urban forestry in terms of the new investment through the Inflation Reduction Act, the Forest Service Urban and Community Forest Grants. So those are some really big dollars that are coming from the federal government, and there are some questions about how can we make sure that those dollars are impactful as they’re being spent? And how do we ensure that equity will be a part of it?
00:19:59 Sarah Calderon
I think those are really good questions. I think that the focus of this is to build tree canopy in those neighborhoods that have faced those social justice inequities historically. And I think that if that is the major goal, then we begin to address some of those inequities. I’m really excited that this has happened, and that there’s focus on really foresting urban neighborhoods. Historically, for example, in Richmond, where there’s refineries and in other places in the East Coast where there’s mills and polluted waters and and all of that. I think this begins to address some of those inequities.
I think in terms of ensuring that we deal with those inequities, the other big component for me is that these dollars go back into those same communities by increasing the opportunities for green collar jobs. Right now we have a retiring workforce in a lot of these green jobs, and there are more green collar jobs that are opening up. So training and educating our young people in those opportunities also begins to address [this]. As we bring resources into the neighborhoods that we’re focused on, I think that becomes one way that we start to really face those inequities.
For me, those are two major components. How do we ensure it on the long term is to look for continued investment. One of the things that happens here is that I think some of our programs are short sighted. We begin the process and then there’s no additional funding. I think moving forward that we need to do more work to ensure that we establish these kinds of programs.
And then a third component for me is education, not only educating our communities and our neighborhoods, but involving them so that all of a sudden the government says “OK, we’re going to tree all the neighborhoods.” But then another piece of it is do the neighbors want an urban tree canopy? I think we need to bring them along.
00:22:07 Renée Mazurek
That’s great. And I I do want to pull out—because I know that your current position is related to that workforce development—so I do want to give you an opportunity to speak about your experience with workforce development at Groundwork Richmond and the youth that you work with now.
00:22:27 Sarah Calderon
Yeah, so, Groundwork Richmond, as I mentioned earlier, coming full circle, wrote a grant to CAL FIRE (California Department of Fire and Forestry); and one of their priorities is to expand the urban canopy in neighborhoods that we focus on. I think they finally figured out that they have a whole workforce that’s retiring and that they need to bring folks along.
This is sort of an experimental project for them. The workforce program…they allowed several programs up and down the state to develop projects and design workforce projects. And so across the state, you’ll see very many different models. Initially the model at Groundwork Richmond was, we thought we would have an internship type program where we would provide a stipend and there would be some courses that we would provide online training in things such as arboriculture and OSHA safety training, CPR… Things that would give them soft and hard skills to seek future employment. Another aspect of the program was job placement.
But in our first cohort earlier this year, not many people were applying. So these are transitional age youth 18 to 25 and when we started looking back, we realized and we learned from different people… I think we were going to pay $1200 a month for four days a week, allowing folks to have a job as well as the ability to go to school if necessary and take our project program. But what we learned is those people needed jobs, not internships. I talked to our funders, CAL FIRE, and I asked them if I could revise the grant and make it an employment situation and so sure enough, we got applicants and people on board.
The program pretty much is the same as I mentioned. Four days a week, 6 hours a day, still giving folks an opportunity to go to school or have another job. But we were paying them a living wage—$20.00 an hour—they became employees… [They spend] two days a week in the classroom with us, with these various programs. And we have training programs with contractors that we bring in to do specific training, even resume and interview writing, financial literacy.
In addition to the programs that I talked about earlier and then on the field on the job training as well. So they’ve worked with our urban forestry crew out in the field, learning how to plant trees, prune trees, maintain trees and other types of projects as well. Lessons learned there for us, and we’re still learning… it’s a pilot. And so we’re now on our second cohort that’s going to graduate in two weeks and very excited about the folks that we bring in.
Other lessons that we’re learning, however, are the folks that were the young people that we’re concentrating on bringing into the workforce, teaching them… sometimes it’s their first time in their job and one of the challenges of course then is structure, accountability, responsibility. So a big part of our training really involves that. Even though we don’t do case management per say, we actually have to address many of these issues and understand that a lot of folks come from homes where perhaps they’re the oldest siblings and they have to drive their siblings to school…and that makes them late for work and things like that. So it’s a balance between teaching them about responsibility and accountability, because we’re not doing them any favors when they go into a job and they feel like there’s flexibility and at the same time, having some compassion and understanding about their situations.
00:26:12 Renée Mazurek
That’s so important. I am curious about, with the first cohort that you had graduate, if you were able to place anybody in positions in the community?
00:26:23 Sarah Calderon
So that’s a good question. And yes, we have. Out of nine folks, we placed seven of them. We have an advantage in that we have an urban forestry program. So in order to extend their work experience that they can put on the resume, we hired four of them right at Groundwork Richmond. And then additionally, we placed a couple of others in other positions throughout the Bay Area as well. It still is a challenge…job placement. Part of my work is to establish partnerships with other organizations—parks for profit businesses, other potential partners that might want to hire.
Many of the positions that are available still require some experience, and so I’m beginning to work more closely with some of those potential partners trying to at least get interviews for some of our cohort. Recently, the National Park Service interviewed one of our employees in the second cohort, and that was a really good thing.
The conversations that we’re having with some of the partners is they still have to go through the process through HR and whatnot. And we’re teaching our cohorts how to engage with the HR departments, complete applications, so that then they’re not overlooked. Again, as I said, we had a specialist, a trainer that is teaching them how to address these applications so that they are considered. But on the other hand, internally I’m working with those partners to look out for some of our folks that are coming through.
00:27:59 Renée Mazurek
Yeah, that’s terrific. And that’s an important step of the process for workforce development.
00:28:06 Sarah Calderon
Yeah, this coming Monday, we have quarterly meetings [with the state] to talk about the successes and the challenges, which is very interesting because, of course, everybody had similar challenges and different approaches and different types of programs, workforce projects. But one of the things that we talked about was creating a statewide bank of jobs, which is helpful. It gives the opportunity for folks that are in the workforce program throughout the state to apply to other jobs throughout the state. That was an idea that came out of the…CAL FIRE workforce program.
00:28:43 Renée Mazurek
Awesome. Glad to hear it. I’m excited to share this with everybody because I think that these are a lot of really great lessons learned.
I’ve got just one more question and it’s: what impact would you like to see Groundwork Richmond have in the next few years?
00:28:58 Sarah Calderon
I think that for the last 10 years, we’ve been slowly building tree canopy. We had a project with NASA Develop, where they launched some equipment to measure the tree canopy to see if there was a measurable difference in the last 10 years from our tree planting… 3000 trees in the neighborhood. And it wasn’t significantly increased. It’s going to take a long time before we get to that canopy. The growth of the urban forest is going to take some time. And so over the next few years, what I hope with a lot of this funding that we’re seeing right now…
We have two major projects. One through the California Natural Resources Agency and another one through the Strategic Growth Council, who’s also a state agency that’s funded US $2,000,000 to plant 1000 trees in a very, very select neighborhood. And I think that and the Strategic Growth Council Council project is a $35 million project with the City of Richmond that has numerous projects and programs, including e-bikes and community gardens throughout this very same neighborhood… and trees. Our components are the trees that we’ll be planting.
In five years [I’d like to] see a neighborhood that is really significantly changed… green and with trees that are thriving and growing. I’d like to see that for many neighborhoods in Richmond. But since we’re focused in these specific neighborhoods here in Richmond, the Iron Triangle, Santa Fe and Coronado. I’m really excited for this work.
I think that I’d like to see Groundwork Richmond be able to not only continue working with the local young people in this project, but then to develop those relationships where those folks come back. We’ve had Green Team members go off to college and come back and start to work and be part of the whole Groundwork network. And I’d like to see that continue as well.
00:31:00 Renée Mazurek
It’s a testament to your ability to connect with people, I think.
Well, thank you so much for talking with me today. I really appreciate it. Appreciate you taking the time and just getting to know you a little bit better and more about your work. It’s terrific. Absolutely amazing.
00:31:17 Sarah Calderon
Well, thank you for the opportunity. We’re here as a resource for anyone that wants to reach out, Groundwork Richmond. We have a lot of exciting projects going on, and we’re always down to help folks and partner with people as well.
00:31:32 Renée Mazurek
Now I think you could see why I was so excited to share this conversation. I have a lot of appreciation for Sarah. I’m so glad that I got to get to know her and spend some time with her for this conversation. She brings a lot to the table for her community, her organization and our network as a whole.
Find out more information about Sarah and Groundwork Richmond at www.groundworkrichmond.org and look for more Urban Waters resources at www.urbanwaterslearningnetwork.org, the initiative funded by EPA’s Office of Water in collaboration with the National Park Service, Rivers Trails, and Conservation Assistance Program and co-coordinated by Groundwork USA and River Network.
Thanks so much for listening. This is Renée signing off and wishing you well.