A4 ■ Sunday, February 23, 2014 ■ Imperial Valley Press
QUOTE OF NOTE
Local&Region
“Leadership is the ability to
get people to work together.”
Hector A. Sanchez, Boy Scout with
Troop 4070
QUESTIONS? Contact Local Content Editor Richard Montenegro Brown at [email protected] or 760-337-3453.
TAKING CARE OF THE LANDSCAPE
Volunteers work together
to clean up Salton Sea
BY SANDY SIERRA
Staff Writer
SALTON CITY — Volunteers worked together
Saturday to clean up trash
dumped illegally near the
Salton Sea.
Christina Lange has
been organizing cleanups
around the Salton Sea for
two years, getting help
through flyers, e-mails
and word of mouth.
A communications
and program consultant,
Lange has traveled to
many parts of the world
Kerry Morrison picks up and collects the trash found but one visit to the
Salton Sea sparked an
by the Salton Sea on Saturday. SANDY SIERRA PHOTO
interest in the area and
prompted her move
there. She now lives in
La Quinta but finds time
to organize cleanups and
help beautify the Salton
Sea.
“My friend told me
about the trash she found
here so I just had to come
down and get a group going to clean it up,” said
Lange.
Andrew Lawrence, 32,
saw a flyer for a cleanup
two years ago when he
was living in Salton City.
Since then, he has gone
to five cleanups in the
area.
“It’s important to keep
the area clean. I’m not
sure why they dumped
trash in this area. Maybe
they’re not aware of the
impact of their trash or
don’t have enough money
to afford to throw it elsewhere,” said Lawrence.
Lack of awareness is a
problem Lange and another volunteer, Kerry Morrison, are trying to solve.
Morrison is executive
director of The EcoMedia
Compass, a public benefit
corporation that uses media tools such as film and
music to educate the public on the ecological prob-
lems surrounding the
Salton Sea.
“We have an event coming up at the Salton Sea.
We’ll have music, art, and
some info on the projects
we do. This area has been
given a bad reputation
but there’s some good
things coming out,” said
Morrison.
“That’s why we want to
clean up the area, make
it beautiful so people can
check it out and not dismiss it,” added Lange.
Lange has also tried to
get police involved in the
issue of illegal dumping.
SEE CLEANUP | A5
BOY SCOUT GARDEN
FAMILY FUN
Hector A. Sanchez’s Eagle Scout project contributed
the Boy Scout garden to the Imperial Valley Desert
Museum. PHOTO COURTESY OF NEAL V. HITCH
Imperial Scout
nears Eagle rank
with project
FROM LEFT: Renee Felix and Helen Jenkins prepare tri-tip servings for customers in the combined Moose
Lodge, Spreckels Sugar and Family Treehouse booth during the third annual tri-tip cook-off Saturday at
Eager Park in Imperial. JOSELITO VILLERO PHOTO
Nonprofit earns community
support at annual event
BY KARINA LOPEZ
Staff Writer
I
MPERIAL — In an effort to
improve family function, pediatric development and the
overall health of the community,
Family Treehouse has provided
free developmental screenings
and low-cost early childhood education for more than 10 years.
As a nonprofit organization,
Family Treehouse relies on the
support of the community in order to keep its doors open and
continue to serve the community, said Rosie Nava, Family Treehouse director.
“If we didn’t get support from
the community we wouldn’t be
able to survive,” Nava said. “We
have fundraisers that start to
add up at the end of year and
that helps us stay open.”
On Saturday, the nonprofit
held one of its fundraisers with
the help of Spreckels Sugar Co.
and the El Centro Moose
Lodge.
“They have been wonderful to
us,” Nava said. “We were out all
night setting up.”
The proceeds from the “Out of
This World BBQ” went directly
to the organization for muchneeded supplies and offered free
activities and photo opportunities for children.
SEE TREEHOUSE | A5
The Family Treehouse train offers rides to both children and adults during the cook-off.
GROWING EVENT
Youth summit hopes
to inspire change
BY SANDY SIERRA
Staff Writer
The fourth annual Imperial County Youth Summit proved to be successful
with as many as 300 seats
filled with at-risk youth
and parents from around
the county.
They listened attentively to the two guest speak-
ers, Ray Lozano and
Carissa Phelps at the
Corfman School in El
Centro.
“This is double the participation we had last
year,”
said
Gloria
Brunswick, the juvenile
division manager at the
Imperial County Probation Department.
Youths respond to a question by guest speaker
Ray Lozano during his presentation on the effects of alcohol on the human brain during the
Imperial County Youth Summit on Saturday at
SEE SUMMIT | A5 Corfman School in El Centro. JOSELITO VILLERO PHOTO
BY NEAL V. HITCH
Special to this Newspaper
Hector A. Sanchez has
been a Boy Scout with
Troop 4070, in Imperial,
for more than six years.
This year he has worked
toward achieving the rank
of Eagle Scout by completing his project, building the Boy Scout garden
at the Imperial Valley
Desert Museum.
“For me it was a simple
decision to get my Eagle
Scout,” said Hector. “It is
the highest rank in Boy
Scouts. There is a lot of
respect in getting it, because it takes a lot of work.”
The Eagle Scout rank
has to be earned before
the age 18. Since its introduction in 1911, the Eagle Scout rank has been
earned by more than 2
million young men.
“There is a lot of work
that no one really knows
about. You have to plan
and complete a community service project. With
all the paperwork, letterwriting, fundraising, project proposal and approvals,
it takes about a year.”
Hector said he didn’t
know what his project
would be, but his assistant
scoutmaster suggested he
go talk to someone at the
museum.
Richard Ryan, who
helps with the gardens at
the museums, said the
project fits right in.
“In 2011, during our
strategic planning at the
Desert Museum, we developed a plan to have a
scout garden, where
scouts could plant cactus
and learn about the adaptation of desert plants,”
Ryan said. “We envisioned
having scouts camp for
the weekend and earn
badges by planting indigenous desert plants, but
nothing really happened
until Hector came along,”
he said “No one had ever
taken the challenge of beginning the garden. His
Eagle Scout project was
the perfect fit.”
Hector started planning
the project in February
2013.
“Planning went fast at
first,” he said, “but it took
a long time for the approval process, and then
when football season started, everything slowed way
down.”
Hector is a senior at Imperial High school and
played defensive back for
the Tigers during their
championship season.
“After football, I began
to refocus on the Eagle
Scout project. I could not
do everything because of
school, so my dad has
helped a lot. He has been
my biggest supporter.”
The two did a lot of
fundraising with local
growers and others.
“We met with the owner
of Arid Concepts and they
were very interested in
helping us. They donated
prickly pear cactus and
helped us get good barrel
cactus. They also gave us
advice on how we should
plant the cactus — always
fill the hole up with water
first before you plant.”
“I put a crew together
and we have worked every
Saturday in February,” said
Hector. “We moved rocks,
developed beds, leveled
ground and this weekend
we planted 44 cacti and
10 agave plants.”
He said he has learned
a lot in the past year.
“Leadership is the ability
to get people to work together. I can’t believe how
well this all worked out.
The donors all worked together to make the project
work, my friends came out
to help me and the museum has been really good
to work with.”
It wasn’t easy but it has
been rewarding, Hector
said.
“The hardest part was
getting my friends up in
the morning, because we
started really early. But it
has been amazing to see
what can get accomplished
when everyone is involved
and working hard together.”