The City of Menlo Park hosted the fifth annual Love Our Earth Festival at Cesar Chavez Ravenswood Middle School on Saturday. The event honored Earth Day and aimed to spread awareness about environmental sustainability, inspire hope and action, and showcase local resources.
Near the entrance of the event, a booth handed out pocketbooks, which, when filled out, served as a ticket for a raffle for an air purifier. Other informational booths provided sustainability strategies, environmental disaster relief procedures, leadership program opportunities, and environmental justice brochures.
Toward the center of the school campus, community members gathered around a patch of soil, participating in a tree planting sponsored by local urban forestation nonprofit Canopy. Children and volunteers took turns digging a hole to make room for the tree. “Trees are essential public health infrastructure and not a luxury, not decoration. [They’re] the kind that cools streets, cleans air, and quietly serves the residents for decades to come,” Canopy board chair Maria Chai said.
Alongside informational booths, many stations offered hands-on activities like nature-based arts and crafts for children and adults to enjoy.
The altars booth, led by volunteer John Carosella, provided leaves, flowers, and seeds to create artwork. “We are helping people understand how to embrace their feeling of love for the earth by building an altar, a little special beauty for their homes that helps evoke the loving feeling that they have for the earth,” Carosella said. Attendees worked side by side on their pieces, bonding through a shared appreciation for the environment.
“I’ve been here several years in a row now, and there’s good energy here. It’s a really high contrast to the kind of pain and pessimism that exists out there. Things are tough right now for a lot of reasons, and places where we can come together and enjoy each other’s company around something positive is super valuable,” Carosella added.
The event also featured stilt walkers, who offered high-fives. Children gathered halfway through the festival to enjoy a magic show about nature and water. The simple entertaining plot helped young attendees learn about ecosystems.
Volunteer Vicente Saavedra ran the City of East Palo Alto’s table, which emphasized environmental justice resources and the next steps toward making policy changes. “I’m trying to look at what community members are facing in terms of environmental injustice within East Palo Alto. We have surveys and brochures that go into more detail about [environmental injustice],” Saavedra said.
“We’ve seen a direct relationship between climate change and the severity of disasters… Rising sea levels, drought, and forest mismanagement. All of that is related,” Brandon Bond, the City of Menlo Park emergency preparedness coordinator, said. He hosted a booth with valuable information about how to address emergencies calmly. “At the end of the day, neighbors helping neighbors, it’s going to make a difference in disaster… the more each household is prepared, the better off we are as a community,” Bond said.
Other tables included information on voting in deadlines in English and Spanish, custom t-shirt making using sustainable ink, and guessing the amount of protein in plant-based sources. An aroma of garlic and warmth surrounded a variety of plant-based food businesses that offered different kinds of sustainable and delicious protein.
In the gym, a section of the event called “Waterpalooza” displayed tri-folds that focused on water conservation, calculating water use, and youth volunteer opportunities.
“Often we’re doing our own things and don’t get to share it, both with the community and with Menlo Park to East Palo Alto,” Menlo Park mayor Betsy Nash said. “The main purpose [of the event] is to celebrate the earth and to showcase everything that’s happening in the community and really bring people together.”
The festival proved to be a great success, drawing kids, parents, and community members to appreciate the environment, discover local opportunities, and gain hope for a more sustainable future.
