To Our Algalita Community,
As I look back on this year, I am struck by how beautifully Algalita’s local and global work intertwined. For years, we have been both a community-rooted Southern California organization and a global resource for educators and young leaders. In 2025, these two sides of our mission strengthened one another in new and meaningful ways.
Across Southern California, thousands of young people stepped into their roles as scientists, leaders, and environmental stewards. Our Ocean Action Leadership Camp, chosen and funded by youth through a city-wide participatory budgeting process, showed what becomes possible when young people shape their own learning. More than 1,000 students joined our coastal science field trips, and many of them had never touched the ocean before, even though they live in Southern California. Our FixIt Clinics, reuse campaigns, community cleanups, and public workshops helped people reconnect to the skills and values of repair, care, and interdependence.
At the same time, our global reach grew in remarkable ways. Through our Wayfinder Society program, educators and students in more than one hundred countries used our free resources, videos, and classroom tools. We also brought educators together in person for our first ever Educator Ally Retreat, creating a joyful space to share ideas, learn new skills, and feel supported. This global community launched twenty youth-led environmental projects through our Student Mini-Grant program, each one rooted in creativity and local knowledge. In 2025, we sent out more than 600 reusable teaching toolkits, reaching nearly 100,000 students across the United States. This number will continue to grow each year as teachers reuse these materials with new classes. These toolkits are not just supplies. They are launching pads for scientific understanding, critical thinking, and student-driven action.
A thread that has long defined Algalita’s work continued to shine this year: we do not simply teach about plastic pollution. We teach young people how to think about global problems. We help them understand systems, make connections, and see how local actions shape the world. Through curriculum on environmental justice, recycling myths, biomagnification, watersheds, and community organizing, students learned not only facts. They learned context, agency, and interconnectedness. It is an approach that empowers students to ask deeper questions and understand the systems that shape their world.
Across everything we accomplished, I see a thriving learning ecosystem. Youth move through a pathway of experiences, from field trips to leadership camp to mini-grants and, ultimately, to Algalita paid internships. Educators follow a similar pathway, finding both resources and community through toolkits, Ally programs, and retreats. Globally, students connect through our Student Hub, virtual events, and youth-led projects. None of this is accidental. It is intentional, coherent, and mutually reinforcing. These pathways are what allow our work to evolve thoughtfully and remain meaningful year after year.
One theme defined our year more than any other: joy. We saw it in student discoveries, in the excitement of new programs, in proud educators, and in volunteers who return again and again. Even while facing daunting environmental challenges, our work is grounded in hope. Real hope, experienced through touch, sight, sound, data, conversation, and connection. Watching a young person discover plankton through a microscope, or repair an item instead of discarding it, creates moments that stay with people and deepen their connection to this shared work.
I also want to acknowledge something that is often overlooked. The scale of what we accomplished would typically require a large organization with a multimillion-dollar budget. Instead, it was created and delivered by a small, deeply committed team that operates with care, creativity, and integrity. The volume of programming, the quality of resources, the community integration, and the national and global visibility all came from a team that pours their heart into this mission every single day.
As we look ahead, your support matters more than ever. Your generosity sustains and expands the programs that cultivate system stewards, empower educators, nurture youth leadership, and protect the waters that connect us all. Every gift, large or small, makes it possible for us to continue offering high-quality, hands-on, deeply relational environmental education across Southern California and around the world.
Thank you for believing in this work. Thank you for believing in our youth. Thank you for believing in a future where plastic pollution is unthinkable. We are profoundly grateful for your partnership.
With gratitude and so much excitement,
Katie Allen
Executive Director
If you believe in what we’re building together, you can support the work here.
