California Safe Schools

ROBINA SUWOL & CALIFORNIA SAFE SCHOOLS

UTNE Magazine named Robina Suwol one of “Fifty Visionaries Who Are Changing the World”. Suwol’s efforts began in in 1998 when she founded, California Safe Schools, a children’s environmental health and justice non-profit. She achieved national prominence by spearheading the Los Angeles Unified Integrated Pest Management (IPM) Policy, the most stringent pesticide policy in the nation for K-12 public schools and the first to embrace the “Precautionary Principle” and “Right to Know”. The success of the policy led to California’s Healthy Schools Act. Today the LA Unified IPM policy serves as an international model for school districts and communities.

On October 6, 2005, Governor Schwarzenegger signed AB 405 (Montanez) sponsored by Suwol and California Safe Schools. The bill bans experimental pesticides, whose health effects are unknown, from California k-12 public schools. As a result more than 6 million California children and hundreds of thousands of school children are protected from experimental chemicals whose health effects are unknown.

Suwol continues to be a leader on children’s environmental health, with an emphasis on schools and environmental justice  communities. Under Robina’s leadership CSS has facilitated changes at the policy level as well as at the grassroots which creates a lasting institutional protection. website:www.calisafe.org