Our Programs
Trinidad Water Festival
Held in May on the Trinidad State College Campus, the Trinidad Water Festival combines the top three items of our mission focus – youth, education and the environment – into an outdoor experiential education experience for all of the K-12 students in Las Animas County and beyond.
Students are scheduled in classroom-sized groups, rotating throughout the campus. Forty to fifty different interactive presentations engage the students and demonstrate or teach some aspect of the importance of water – how critical it is for our human health as well as for all life on the planet and how water affects almost every area of our lives.
Students learn lessons in conservation and stewardship – lessons we hope will be multiplied through family members, friends, and future children of these students.
Environmental Scholarships
We believe that investing in youth, education, and the environment is a strong strategy for protecting and improving our natural environment.
With that in mind, we have initiated an Environmental Scholarship Program which raises funds and awards scholarships to local students who are going on to college to study in any field that can benefit the natural environment.
Working closely with area high school counselors and our local selection committee, we solicit and review scholarship applications, grade and score each application, meet to interview scholarship applicant finalists, discuss relative merits of each applicant and make scholarship award decisions within our annual budget.
Network Council
With the goal of bringing together a broad range of collaborative partners to network about upcoming community events and activities we host the Network Council Meetings on the 1st Thursday of each month from 8:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m.
Each attendee has an opportunity to give a brief recap of their upcoming events or activities. The desired outcome of this exchange is to encourage mutual support of community events and activities as well as to look for opportunities to collaborate and reduce expenses, share workload and generate excitement and broader exposure.
Trinidad Farmers Market
Saturdays, July through October, our “Coffee For Causes” booth at the Trinidad Farmers Market has promoted The Purgatoire Valley Foundation, The Bar NI Ranch Community Fund, and the Culebra Range Community Coalition and raised funds for the Environmental Scholarship Program.
Visitors to the booth learn about the vision, mission and programs through banners, posters, handouts and conversation. Fresh brewed coffee and homemade breakfast items and snacks are sold a dollar at a time to raise funds in support of the Environmental Scholarship Program.
An interesting bonus of this outreach is the incredible networking that takes place. As community members come to the Farmers Market for their fresh produce, many sit and visit over a cup of coffee in our “Coffee for Causes” booth. The booth has become an incubator for new ideas and projects for the community and the watershed.