Celebrating young environmentalists and the grants and organizations
by Susie Hairston
Every day, we are bombarded with more and more depressing stories of environmental degradation and inhumanity. In the face of this onslaught, it is easy to lose sight of all the positive things that are also happening. So this week, we are celebrating young environmentalists, grant funding that supports valuable environmental work, and organizations like Bayou Preservation Association (BPA) who both provide opportunities to young people and support the work of other environmental nonprofits.
The Watershed Steward program, made possible by a grant Bayou Preservation Association (BPA) received from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, was a great opportunity for several young environmentalists to gain experience and skills and connect with community while helping several local environmental organizations, including BPA, build capacity. The program ran from late summer 2025 through Spring 2026.
The program was intended to give stewards hands-on experience in environmental communication, outreach strategy, event planning and support, data collection, and public engagement. In addition to local activities the stewards participated in collaborative regional initiatives designed to connect historically under-resourced communities with volunteer opportunities, educational programming, and green infrastructure training that benefits both residents and the health of Galveston Bay. The stewards also received a variety of trainings in things such as green infrastructure and water quality testing.
Three of the young environmentalists who participated in the program shared what brought them to the environmental space, what they accomplished during their time in the watershed steward program, and how the program helped them grow.
Andrea Barrera, the watershed steward intern for Bayou Preservation Association, came to environmental work looking through the lens of international development. An international studies major at the University of St Thomas who graduated this May, she has cared about the environment since she was a child, and since her university did not have an environmental studies program, she did internships in the environmental space throughout her college years.
Growing up, Andrea spent a lot of time outdoors and always had an affinity for wild animals: “I grew up in Sugarland near a levy that filled with water when it rained. If you go out at night, you see coyotes passing by. That inspired me, but I never saw that in the day. Urban sprawl made me interested in this. As I got older, I wondered, “Why can’t we incorporate nature into this growing city?”
Participating in Geoversity, a sustainable development program for youth in Panama, where her family is from, is what brought her to sustainable development. She was working to protect the forest in a delicate eco-corridor while also working with local farmers to ensure that they too were protected by helping them learn and use sustainable farming methods and build eco-tourism.
Andrea was interested in applying to the watershed steward program because access to water is both a human and a wildlife necessity and because, as she pointed out “the bayous here in Houston are not just about water – – they are the thread that connects everyone and everything.”
Andrea’s watershed steward position involved researching and developing educational flyers to be used for community outreach. “I worked on a ‘what is a watershed’ flyer, an infographics pamphlet that was distributed to partner organizations and the TCEQ.”
She explains, “I learned a lot. I don’t know where to start. I connected with so many community organizations, super neighborhoods, civic clubs, and more. I did a lot of talking to them and seeing what they needed support on so we could target community engagement and develop community marketing and outreach materials that will benefit them and address their issues. I also learned how an organization works. I am blessed because the team at BPA taught me not just what a project manager does, but what a social media manager and a CEO do. I got to see a little bit of everyone’s role.”
Her favorite project while working with BPA was engaging with the Sunnyside community on a big concern of theirs – litter. She worked with the CBO Clean the Block, providing education and helping to build capacity to do more clean-ups.
A training course on green infrastructure during her time as a watershed steward really resonated with her as it tied together her interest in environment and development.
Now that she has graduated, she plans to go on and get a masters in something like environmental design, but before she does that, she is going to travel to other cities to see what they are doing in terms of sustainable development, walkability, and nature-based infrastructure; she is also looking into doing an internship in urban planning or historical preservation — another passion of hers. She wants to better understand what it takes to make a city more walkable — how to design an effective and safe public transit system, how to make green spaces more accessible to all. As she says: “I am never going across a freeway to go to park or go to park where I have to walk in the blazing sun with no tree cover to get there in the summer.”
She has seen wildlife and humans co-exist well together and, in the long-term, wants to help create that in other places. “Recently I did a service learning project in Kenya, working with children in slums. Nairobi has a huge wildlife park right next to it with lions. It’s very interesting how the people coexist with animals there; they graze cows on public lands. The zoo is not a bunch of huge fences — the animals are free and you can see them, but they get to roam in large spaces. There wildlife, nature, and indigenous people are valued parts of their country. Trying to maintain the wild that wildlife need and provide a better life for people at the same time is what they are working on. The way of life there really resonated with me.”
Lola Herndon, watershed steward with White Oak Bayou Association (WOBA) came to WOBA having graduated from Tulane University with a major in Environmental Studies and Public Health.
Her love of nature, and specifically, Houston’s urban nature, started young. “I was a nature kid from such a young age. I spent a lot of time outside. I loved birds and animals and being dirty. Being outside always made me so happy.” As she got older, she took advantage of her Montrose location to take 20-40 mile bike rides along Buffalo Bayou to downtown and the Heights every weekend.
Then, “in high school I started taking an environmental science course and getting really interested in that — it was more science based – it touched on environmental issues, but didn’t do a deep dive into them, and it got me interested in doing my own research and understanding what was going on.”
During her time at Tulane, Lola had done some internships focused on community building around community gardens and food equity. She was interested in the intersection between environment and health.
A native Houstonian, she was interested in the Watershed Stewardship because “Growing up here, I realize how important green space is. I love the Bayou Greenway System.”
During her time as a watershed steward, Lola, helped WOBA with a slight rebrand. A go-getter, when she realized she had some downtime in her work at WOBA, she reached out to BPA and offered to do some work for them as well. She designed outreach and educational material for both WOBA and BPA. She tabled for both WOBA and BPA at several events, and she created and organized her own pocket prairie event complete with native and invasive plant scavenger hunts. “It was a little bit of everything: helping with events, marketing, designing educational material, helping with research — whatever the organization needed.”
Lola feels like she learned a lot during her time as a watershed steward, “A skill I’ve definitely become stronger in is community outreach and engagement. Previously, I hadn’t had much experience coordinating with a lot of different people and organizations on the same project. I learned how to deal with permitting for events and working with city organizations like flood control and the parks department while also reaching out to community members and non-profit organizations and engaging them in what WOBA and BPA have to offer.”
She feels her internship with WOBA was valuable for many reasons, but what she found most impactful was the ability to see into the workings of several environmental organizations — both BPA and WOBA, but also the organizations where other watershed stewards had been placed. She was able to see both how small neighborhood focused organizations worked as well as how larger organizations with more extensive missions functioned.
Lola’s favorite component of the trainings provided during the watershed steward program was the green infrastructure education piece because it didn’t just show the problems, but also demonstrated solutions. Now that she has completed her stewardship, Lola continues to be part of the solution, working as the Volunteer Coordinator for Buffalo Bayou Partnership.
Michael Purdom, watershed steward with Greens Bayou Coalition (GBC), came to the program as a graduate of Southwestern University with a major in environmental studies and a minor in political science. He grew up hunting and fishing his whole life, and, as he said, because of this, “I’ve always been connected to nature and learned to respect it and treat it properly.” Taking an Environmental AP class in high school firmed up his desire to pursue working in the environmental space: “I enjoyed the problem solving in that class because I thought we were really fixing a part of the world.”
After his exposure to environmental studies in high school, he was drawn to pursuing environmental studies in college. “If you do environmental studies, you find out how the world works. I like that making a positive impact on my environment also means I’m making a positive impact on my community because human health is tied to environmental health.” He was drawn to environmental studies because of its immediate applicability to real life.
The watershed stewardship with Greens Bayou Coalition was a perfect fit as he had plenty of opportunity to use his problem solving skills and to make a practical difference on the environment with the projects he was working on.
Like the other watershed stewards, Michael really enjoyed the green infrastructure trainings he received, as they were very specific and had immediate practical applications. “You could really use what you learned in them to apply to a real world project.”
And Michael had the opportunity to do a lot of real world projects while with Greens Bayou Coalition — he helped organize tree plantings, bayou clean-ups, and GBC’s annual regatta. This entailed coordinating with landscapers and government agencies, sending and responding to emails, coordinating with volunteer outreach, and creating flyers.
In helping coordinate all these events, he learned a variety of organizational and preparation strategies for events which he can now deploy in other jobs. “At GBC there’s only two employees and 1 volunteer so they’ve had to be really intentional.”
His favorite event was the tree planting. “ I really love tree planting because it is adding something that will stay there forever. Don’t get me wrong, I also like doing canoe clean-ups, but eventually the trash is going to come back. Trees add value to the human community and the environment, and help with flood control.”
MIchael plans to use his problem solving skills and continue making a difference in the world by going to law school.