News Stories

UC Cooperative Extension 4-H advisor Mike Marzolla applied his Peace Corps’ experiences in community development and environmental science to create unique 4-H programs for underserved youth in Santa Barbara County during his 28-year career. He retired June 29.

In addition to supporting the county’s 15 traditional 4-H clubs, Marzolla managed many large unconventional 4-H programs to engage local minority youth in environmental education.

While enrolled as a fine arts student at Humboldt State University, Marzolla was a participant in the college’s first environmental studies class. He earned a bachelor’s degree in 1973 and served in the Coast Guard Reserve before volunteering for the Peace Corps for four years, mainly in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

“That’s what got me interested in extension work,” Marzolla said. In Latin America, Marzolla worked with agricultural co-ops, school and community gardens and nutrition education.

Marzolla earned a master’s degree in non-formal education at the University of Massachusetts, took on a distance learning consultancy in the southern African nation of Lesotho, served as a Peace Corps trainer in California, co-led an appropriate technology training program for Peace Corps trainees at the Farallones Institute in Occidental California (now the Occidental Center for Arts and Ecology), and served as the director of special projects for CHDC, a non-profit organization serving farmworkers in Windsor, Calif., before joining UC Cooperative Extension in 1983 as a 4-H Youth Development advisor.

With experienced staff and devoted volunteers helping manage the 4-H club program, Marzolla turned his attention to children of low-income families who had fewer opportunities for enrichment activities. One of his first initiatives was 4-H GreenNet, a collaborative project that supported families living in public housing and their children in running small horticultural business startups. The project, which continues today under the auspices of the Santa Barbara Housing Authority, provides 10 weeks of hands-on training to kindergarten through 12^th-grade students in gardening, computer technology and running a business.

Teen volunteers mentor younger children, who in turn train their parents in information technology. Since its inception, GreenNet has served more than 550 youth and 350 public housing families. The project received a National Award for Excellence from the USDA in 2002.

Marzolla’s second major program was the 4-H Agua Pura (Pure Water) Leadership Institute. The program was initiated in 1998 in collaboration with the University of Wisconsin’s Environmental Resources Center with a grant from the USDA.  Marzolla expanded the program with financial support from the County Water Agency and the Resource Extension Act. The funds allowed Marzolla to hire interns to work on water quality community education.

The interns and local community partners developed a series four fotonovelas (Spanish-language comic books) with stories about environmental protection. The three recent editions use “luchador” characters. Luchadors are traditional Latin American heroes who take part in “lucha libre,” a popular, entertaining form of wrestling. The youth also created a two-minute video, “Fighting for our Environment/Luchando por nuestro ambiente,” with their luchador characters, which won an award at the local Green Shorts Environmental Film Festival.

With funding from the UC Santa Barbara Coastal Fund, the fotonovelas are being published in English and Spanish, along with a new “telenovela” video short based on the fotonovela story. They are also publishing a book of luchador environmental hero characters with photos shot at an Earth Day festival. (The fotonovelas are available in pdf format on the Agua Pura website.)

Over the years, Marzolla employed 40 interns in the 4-H Agua Pura Leadership Institute. The majority were bilingual and bicultural.

“This gave the students the opportunity to experience 4-H and UC Cooperative Extension from a different perspective,” Marzolla said. “Many of my former interns have gone into natural resource careers and are using the experience in their professional lives.”

Marzolla also created the California Aquatic Science Education Consortium, a statewide collaboration that produced five manuals on water-related issues from 1989 to 2002. The manuals, titled “Water inspectors,” “Fresh water guardians,” “Plastic eliminators,” “Wetland protectors,” and “Creek watchers,” are still available in the UC ANR online catalog.

“When we wrote the manuals, we intended for them to serve as a resource for 4-H and for all youth programs, such as Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts,” Marzolla said. “The materials were adapted into Spanish and have been used internationally in Spanish-speaking countries.”

In another innovative program geared to engage low-income, primarily Latino youth, Marzolla helped coordinate a collaborative, free summer day camp for six years. The Fun in the Sun program incorporated youth leadership, sport fishing, gardening, environmental studies, arts, crafts and swimming. Children were provided the opportunity to visit the natural history museum, zoo and botanical garden.

“Most of these kids would never have had the chance to visit these places – many didn’t even know they existed,” Marzolla said.

During retirement, Marzolla plans to continue working with at-risk youth from low-income families. He and a former colleague have initiated a local City Corps, a neighborhood program based on the California Conservation Corps.

“We want to curb youth violence,” Marzolla said. “We’re trying to give young people healthy alternatives to just hanging out on the street and provide them with good role models.”

City Corps will enlist volunteers to help the participants develop life skills, work skills and capacity to live civically and constructively.

Marzolla will also continue his volunteer radio production work with American Indian Airwaves (Coyote Radio - KPFK Pacifica Radio in Los Angeles), and be involved in an annual Chumash tomol (redwood-plank canoe) channel crossing from Ventura to Santa Cruz Island. Despite this continuing youth development volunteer work, Marzolla said he expects retirement to provide him time to again pursue his interests in fine arts, traveling and international consulting.