VENTURA — Each year, elementary school students travel by bus to Students for Eco-Education and Agriculture’s (SEEAG) free Farm Lab program at Petty Ranch in Ventura and Allan Hancock College’s Demonstration Orchard in Santa Maria. While at the farms, students learn about the farm origins of their food. Funds raised through SEEAG’s current “Bus Bucks” fundraiser will help offset school bus expenses so that field trips remain entirely cost-free to students, teachers and schools.
Courtesy photo.
For each Farm Lab field trip, SEEAG gives schools $300 for bus expenses. Currently, SEEAG is scheduled to host 70 field trips in 2024. To ensure there are enough funds to pay for transportation, the Bus Bucks’ goal is to raise $20,000.
“High transportation costs often prevent schools from offering field trips,” says Mary Maranville, founder and CEO of SEEAG. “We don’t want transportation to be an obstacle. If we receive enough donations during the Bus Bucks campaign, thousands of Ventura, Los Angeles and Santa Barbara county students will be able to travel from their schools to one of SEEAG’s Farm Lab locations.”
In the 2022/23 school year, SEEAG educated 7,547 students from 21 school districts about local agriculture during 58 field trips to its two Farm Labs. That number is projected to increase to 10,600 students from 83 school districts in the 2023/24 school year. Most students have never been to a farm. Many who attend are low-income, Title 1 students.
To make a Bus Bucks donation, go to https://www.seeag.org/bus-bucks. For more about SEEAG’s ag education programs, go to www.seeag.org. To watch a video about how donations are used, go here.
About SEEAG — Founded in 2008, Students for Eco-Education and Agriculture (SEEAG) is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization that aims to help young students understand the origins of their food by bridging the gap between agriculture and consumption through its agricultural education programming. SEEAG’s “The Farm Lab” program teaches schoolchildren about the origins of their food and the importance of local farmland by providing schools with classroom agricultural education and free field trips to farms. Through this and other SEEAG programs, over 100,000 elementary school students in Central and Southern California have increased their understanding of the food journey. For more information, visit www.seeag.org or email Mary Maranville at mary@seeag.org.