Our vision is to cultivate environmental leaders in our own community, but we can’t do it alone.
ESSP is a high quality college access program that cultivates real-world skills in environment and STEM. This program is FREE for our students and offers curriculum equivalent to Ivy+ summer programs that typically charge from $2K – $3.5K per student.
We seek to raise $60,000 per year to fund 30 students.
“I have learned so much. I’ve learned how to apply information to the real world and what it means outside the classroom. I’ve learned how much fun environmental science is and the passion people have for it. The number of opportunities are astounding!” – Trevor Hamlett, Jordan High School
“My favorite part of ESSP was going down to the creek [and] finding crayfish, fish, and a lot of salamanders, caddisflies, stoneflies, mayflies. They were all incredible. I could just scoop them up with the d-net and they were all there.”– Justin Witherspoon, Southern School of Engineering
“Our guest speakers have expanded even beyond what we were talking about urban streams and the Durham water system. It was really nice to get this broader view as well as the focused view [on New Hope Creek].” – Katie Reiter-Lavery, Durham School of the Arts
“I had a great time and really appreciate being able to be a participant in this program. I will remember this forever!” – ESSP Student
