Today we’d like to introduce you to Nikolas Kennedy.
Nikolas, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I have always loved being outdoors and exploring the world around us. My background work and school prioritized a connection to nature through our societal land-use. After earning my Master in City Planning from San Diego State University, I worked for a few governmental agencies and landed in a boutique public outreach firm that specialized in public works. While the job offered me excellent project management training, the work lacked a stewardship of the earth and a connection to people.
After a few years focusing on real estate and freelance editing, I accepted a position with I Love A Clean San Diego, coordinating educational outreach and leading community clean-ups throughout the County. I spent the past two years building a County-wide community clean-up program from the ground-up, including partner-building, and an educational watershed component for volunteers. I’ve coordinated our outreach at over 500 community events and connected with thousands of incredible human beings. I’m proud of the partnerships I’ve built with local stakeholders, but I’m most proud that I have played a central role in San Diegans diverting half-a-million pounds of litter from our region in the 2+ years I have led events.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I’ve dealt with some tough obstacles along the way. At 22, my mother passed away after a lengthy battle with pancreatic cancer. During the Great Recession, I struggled with unemployment and the difficult position of applying for positions when jobs were scarce and incredibly competitive. I have been undervalued in past positions in my career, overseeing high-level project management while struggling to support myself on low wages.
I have cared for my aging great-aunt for the last ten years and navigated the bureaucracy of her complicated medical and financial problems. Recently, the nature of my “struggles” have been something I’m grateful for: More work than I can handle! The benefits and challenges of working with a small non-profit is the many “hats” you wear, and over the last year, our multi-disciplinary work has exploded. This is an amazing benefit, but has resulted in some burn-out in 2019.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the I Love A Clean San Diego Story. Tell us more about your work.
I Love A Clean San Diego is San Diego’s oldest environmental non-profit! Founded in 1954 as the San Diego War Against Litter Committee (WALC), we have operated for over 65 years as stewards of the region and work tirelessly with volunteers, students, and local partners to keep San Diego looking beautiful!
What sets us apart from other groups in San Diego is our ability to do so much! I Love A Clean San Diego leads and inspires our community to actively conserve and enhance the environment through example, outreach, and local involvement. We do this in 3 primary ways:
(1) Education – our Education team works hard every day to educate students through classroom presentations, community members through public sustainability workshops, and business leaders through business networking workshops. We host an annual event called Kids Ocean Day, that brings over 1,000 underprivileged students to the beach for a day of marine education and a litter clean-up. Some of these kids are seeing the beach for the first time!
(2) Outreach – our Community Programs team coordinates our presence in the community with booths at public events, tabling at corporate events, and partnering with local governmental agencies to promote important informational resources. Our Recycling Programs team oversees our Waste Free SD program, a comprehensive, searchable database that can help you locate places to properly dispose of different types of waste, as well as recommend ways to reuse, repurpose, and repair items. We also have plenty of resources to educate San Diegans on how to reduce waste every day in their own homes and businesses.
(3) Gettin’ Out There and Cleaning-up! – In addition to our education and our resourceful outreach, we host clean-ups every month where anyone can join us. We bring all the supplies and some fun educational tools, and we work as a group to clean up a part of San Diego that can use some TLC. We verify community service hours and have scout patches, so these are awesome, family-friendly events you can be proud to spend your Saturday morning at. Each year we host two major, County-wide clean-ups – 1 in the spring and 1 in the fall, where we organize over 6,000 San Diegans to clean-up their local neighborhood. These clean-ups add up to hundreds of thousands of pounds of trash diverted from our watersheds annually. Due to COVID-19, we postponed our April event, Creek to Bay, and will be leading this effort on June 20, 2020! To join in the fun, check out WWW.CREEKTOBAY.ORG!
As the Community Events Coordinator, I spent two years supporting our community outreach. I worked with local partners to attend community events and promote resources and education to guests – how and what to recycle, where to take Household Hazardous Waste for safe disposal, and how to volunteer with our organization. In the time I’ve been with I Love A Clean San Diego, we have attended over 500 events around the county to inspire San Diegans to get involved.
For nearly three years, I have organized and led the majority of our monthly litter clean-ups. I’ve built partnerships with some amazing local groups, identified areas in need of a good clean-up effort, and recruited volunteers from our amazing base of over tens of thousands of active individuals, to get together on a Saturday morning and do some good for our environment!
I’m proud to have led over 75 community clean-ups with groups of all sizes and educated our volunteers on the significance of their work to protect our watersheds. These monthly clean-ups have diverted tens of thousands of pounds of litter from the watershed.
Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
Growing up, my family would camp on San Onofre beach in Camp Pendleton for a week in the summer. We would bring our pop-up tent trailer, a family of 5, 2 small dogs, a BBQ, multiple coolers, boogie boards, surfboards, and bikes, and spend all day, every day around the water. From water activities to cold cut sandwiches for lunch to bonfires in the evenings, my brothers and I were obsessed with the ocean and camping. I spent over ten summers there, and I didn’t know then how profoundly they would shape my life, my worldview, and my love for nature and my family.
Contact Info:
- Address: 5797 Chesapeake Court, Suite 200
San Diego, CA 92123 - Website: www.cleansd.org
- Phone: 6197951060
- Email: nkennedy@cleansd.org
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iloveacleansd/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/iloveacleansd
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/iloveacleansd
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/i-love-a-clean-san-diego-san-diego?osq=i+love+a+clean+san+diego
- Other: www.creektobay.org
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