Sea School receives grant to fund ‘River to the Sea’ program for Hendry County students
The Sanibel Sea School received a grant from the Southwest Florida Community Foundation, which will help them fund a program currently underway for fourth grade students in Hendry County.
Co-Founder and Executive Director Dr. Bruce Neill is proud of the Sanibel Sea School for recognizing there are a ton of kids within the inland counties that do not have access to the ocean. That realization occurred about two years ago.
The Sanibel Sea School already services organizations in Lee County that promote child and teen enrichment. Neill said the “landlocked kids” come from the Heights Foundation, Gladiolus Learning and Development Center, Pine Manor Community Improvement Association and PACE Center for Girls.
The staff recognized that there were also an awful lot of kids in Hendry County who also should have the opportunity to see the ocean. With that realization, Neill said they began working with a contact of theirs that runs the Coalition for Immokolee Workers.
“She is very well connected with that whole agricultural community. She connected us with a teacher in Hendry County who happens to be the gifted and talented teacher, Nanlyn Akin,” he said.
After Akin shared her excitement about offering the opportunity to her students, the Sanibel Sea School began the program, River to the Sea. The program affords the Sanibel Sea School with the opportunity to see kids once a month from the Hendry County schools. Hendry County provides the transportation to bring the kids to the island, and the Sanibel Sea School designed a curriculum for the students.
“The thing that I am proud of is we saw a need in Hendry County and we filled it. We found the partners and at that point, the vast majority of the cost of that program was absorbed by the Sanibel Sea School. We just did it,” Neill said. “We didn’t have any funding, any grant. Hendry County supplied a bus, above and beyond their need, but outside of the bus, all of the other costs were absorbed by the Sanibel Sea School.”
The Sanibel Sea School did the same exact thing when they saw a need and began a partnership with the other organizations.
“A need has been identified and we have said, ‘let’s do it,'” Neill said, which is followed by figuring out the funding at a later date.
The need of funding was addressed through the Community Impact Grant, which the Sanibel Sea School received from the Southwest Florida Community Foundation.
“We had this program going and we wrote a grant,” Neill said.
With the grant, Nicole Finnicum, director of education will participate in a series of seminars. Neill said as the executive director he will also attend seminars, which will afford him the ability to network with other nonprofits, as well as learn more about business management.
The Sanibel Sea School provides financial support in two ways – the first providing scholarships to anyone who walks through the door, and the other scholarship goes towards the ongoing programs with the organizations that are not funded.
“All you have to say is I can’t afford the program,” he said. “Our response is fine, we will give you a scholarship. We will ask you to pay what you can and if that’s zero that is fine. If that is $10 that is fine. It is an honor system, pay what you can.”
Neill said the Southwest Florida Community Foundation is paying for 100 percent of the first year of the program offered for the Hendry County students.
The Episcopal Church Women of the St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church has granted them money to cover half of their Heights Foundation program.
One of the reasons the Sanibel Sea School began working with Hendry County was because of its relation with conservation and society.
“I think our recent political elections demonstrated to us, or it should have demonstrated to us, the giant divide. For our particular part of the world that divide is coastal, inland and economical,” he said. “For most it is demographics, white and nonwhite.”
Neill said one of our community problems, apart from all of the divides, is water quality.
“Those guys live upstream. In order to solve our water quality, we have to start at Lake Okeechobee and we have to recognize we are all one community connected by the Caloosahatchee,” he said. “It really is about conversation and sort of a larger question of how can we demonstrate to all of us we are not different. You are upstream on the Caloosahatchee and we are downstream. We are one community.”
Neill said the kids have no way of knowing that until they come down the river because they are rural kids.
A tradition of the Sanibel Sea School is releasing coconuts in the ocean to see where they go.
“We decided wouldn’t this be cool. Why don’t we do this with the Hendry County kids because they can put them in the river, put a tag on them, paint them up,” Neill said.
A few of the Sanibel Sea School educators took coconuts to the students in Hendry County last week to give them the opportunity to paint the coconuts, and add the tag. The tag, Neill said reads “Congratulations you have a Sanibel Sea School current study coconut. Please note your location and call the Sanibel Sea School and tell us where you found it and we will pay you a dollar.”
Neill said the idea is that the student will have the opportunity to course the path of the coconut and hopefully, if the coconut is locally found, they can connect the finder with the student during one of their visits. He said he hopes it will start to bridge the community gap.
In addition to bridging the community gap, it will also address the water quality issues.
“We have to recognize all of us need a healthy river. When our river is healthy, our estuary will be healthy. It has a little broader context than just taking kids to the ocean, although it is about taking the kids to the ocean,” Neill said.
The Sanibel Sea School’s vision statement is “in a world where all people value, understand and care for the ocean.” Neill said to try and realize the vision, their mission is to “improve the ocean’s future, one person at a time.”
He said they recently added a value statement to explain how the Sanibel Sea School goes about accomplishing their mission and vision statements.
“We are the Ocean Tribe. We accept and respect each other and the ocean. We have the courage to explore the depth of both.”
“We really are about enriching lives. We hope that through the enrichment of people’s lives the ocean will be better off,” Neill said.