Who is SELVA? 
SELVA International is a nonprofit, 501(c)3, tax exempt organization. SELVA’s mission is to educate and empower people to protect the environment. We do this by building alliances that support on the ground projects based in science, education, long-term planning, and sound economics. SELVA was founded by Ph.D. ecologists with over 100 years of combined on-the-ground experience working in conservation.
The Project
The broad goal of the Last Chance Project is to educate the public on the scientific basis behind environmental issues and take action. Our specific goal is to identify and create an interactive, multi-media curriculum that reaches the individual on an emotional and personal level to inspire true learning. This curriculum will be a free resource available to educators and promoted to the public through social media.
This project teaches environmental themes in a non-traditional manner that is stimulating, interesting, emotionally evocative, and driven by data. Scientific evaluation ensures that media is factual, while peer and student evaluation ensure that only effective curriculum is provided on the site.
Project Objectives
- Create and provide content that educators can use to add diversity, interest, emotion, and science to existing environmental education curriculum (such as the California EEI).
- Provide and link to resources and action items that help people change to more sustainable lifestyles and societies.
- Implement ongoing evaluation and testing of materials to ensure scientific validity, quality, and effective learning outcomes.
- Create a promotional campaign that will draw educators and the public to the site.
Content for Eco-Educators
We believe that well-constructed, emotionally evocative media are important tools for environmental education. While there is an array of media available online that can be used to enhance lectures about environmental topics, it can be difficult to access reliable and scientifically accurate sources. It can take educators weeks to search for and identify the best media. Additionally, new materials become available all the time, making it challenging to keep up. This project will provide the best, most current media that has already been reviewed for its scientific validity, quality, emotional response, and learning results. Educators can be assured that content:
- is based in science.
- fulfills an obvious educational objective (e.g., outlines the dangers of plastic pollution).
- causes an emotional response.
- engages and entertains the individual.
- motivates viewers to share the content with their peers.
- pushes the individual to action.
We provide additional information for educators, to facilitate its use in the classroom. This includes terms, key concepts, media summaries, and action items.
Acknowledgment
This website was created by UCLA students under the guidance of Dr. Alison Lipman.
Currently maintained by UCLA students: Shahira Mehrzai, Camille Flynn, Hanxi Meng
Previously maintained by UCLA students: Andy Aguiar, Anurag Bajjuri, Spencer Berger, Zeynep Celikkol, Priscila Coronado, Ryan Du, Evan Gentry, Chia Goh, Kaitlyn Honeychurch, Steven Martinez, Peterson Nguyen, Christopher Perez, Chris Rice, Holly Rizzo, Salome Salia, Reece Salmons, Selene She, and Ashley Shirriff, Jackson Alga-Sheriff, Kerilyn Matson, Christiana Prekopa, Laurel Thomas, Jasmine White, and Sophia Will.
Contact Us
If you would like to contact us or have any questions or concerns regarding the project, please email us at lcpearth@gmail.com.