This week is Earth week, the perfect time to learn all the fun ways you can help our planet. This week kicked off the celebration with an Earth Day fair on Monday, April 21.

The first Earth Day fair occured in April 2017, when the student run Join Us in Making Progress, known as JUMP Sustainability, hosted a multitude of successful tabling activities in the Darwin/Stevenson Quad of the Sonoma State University campus, each with a drive towards enhancing student’s sustainability habits.  

The event is officially back on the Sonoma State University campus and JUMP is eager for an even larger turnout in the push for a more sustainable future.

“The fair will include tabling by several student organizations campus who focus on sustainable efforts,” said JUMP President Peter Forte. 

The fair also includes student activities amongst music and prizes. Forte maintains that the goal of the Earth Day Fair, like others, is to promote sustainability on and off Sonoma State’s campus. 

The second annual Earth Week Stuff Swap Event, held this Wednesday, April 24, will carry on from 11 a.m. -4 p.m. at the Mt. McKinley Gym in the Campus Recreation Center.

Simply put, “leave something and take something” is JUMP Sustainability’s motto for the second annual Stuff Swap. However, as the coalition underscores, these “somethings” must align with the practical desires of fellow college students alike. Whether they’re “used clothes, school supplies, books, dishes, appliances, or other useful things that you or your fellow college students would want.” 

However, beyond the prize incentives, the fair aims to promote a student-immersed experience to promote critically important, widespread sustainability awareness and the sense of urgency through which it must be treated. 

 JUMP Sustainability has been engaged as a crucial community force in Sonoma County for several years. The impassioned work of its coalition of volunteers is certainly nothing new. 

Often meeting for volunteer work and carpooling from our campus, JUMP is also credited for improving and maintaining other local community highlights, like Cotati’s Pocket Park.

In 2009, with the assistance of Daily Acts, a Petaluma-based non-profit organization, “Pocket Park—a 5,000sq foot piece of city property located in Cotati near Oliver’s Market—was transformed from an underutilized lawn to a community food forest. “ said JUMP advisor Amanda Hanson. “Removing the lawn helped to reduce the use of water, pesticides, fertilizers and lawn mower fuel while creating an educational community area with edible plants.”

JUMP has routinely brought volunteers to assist with the park’s maintenance to complete tasks including weeding, watering, and the like—each aiding in establishing and beautifying the community that surrounds us. 

Just a few days following the Stuff Swap event, the Sustainability coalition is also hosting a volunteer event for mulch placement and padding for pathways, pruning, and possible “infill planting and irrigation fixe” at the Foothills Model Site in Windsor on Saturday April 27, from 10 a.m. – 2 p.m. Interested students can meet on campus at the flagpoles first at 9:15 a.m.

While the Earth Week  Stuff Swap on Wednesday, April 24, on the Sonoma State University campus is anticipated, JUMP still persists in its current off-campus sustainability efforts as well.