By Sara Ballenger

Photo by Monique Schoenfeld, Town Crier

Software giant Oracle has awarded a $15,000 grant to Hidden Villa, an environmental education center and preserve in Los Altos Hills.

“The grant is specifically to train the educators in our environmental education program about sustainability, so they can teach it to the kids,” said Diana Sanson, associate director of development at Hidden Villa.

“Hidden Villa has done a lot in area of sustainability. We have many buildings that incorporate dozens of designs.”

One such example of sustainable living that teachers and students will be learning about at Hidden Villa can be found in the newly built Wolken Education Center.

“There is a solar fountain, with a solar panel at the kid’s level, explained Chris Overington, director of environmental education. “If they stand completely in front of it, it stops. If they only stand halfway in front of it, the fountain goes half its height.” The fountain is just one of the center’s solar installations.

Overington explained that this type of hands-on learning is an integral part of the programs at Hidden Villa.

“We can show that energy comes in various forms and changes into various forms,” he said. “Students can also learn about the use of straw as a building material,” he added describing the new education center, built using straw bales made out of recycled rice hay.

The newest Hidden Villa buildings themselves have become teaching tools.

“If you take a student to a straw bale house, they can feel that the side facing the sun is hot, but the inside remains cool,” Sanson said. “It really brings the idea of sustainability to life for them.” It’s not just the outer structures that reiterate the idea of sustainable living. Rainwater collects on the roof to be used for irrigation, solar panels provide electricity and the countertops are made from recycled newspaper, soybean resin and sunflower hulls.

The $15,000 grant will go a long way in helping Hidden Villa bring its sustainable living program full circle.

“This is the area Hidden Villa has the most need right now, and we wanted to be able to help them fill that need,” said Rosalie Gann, director of Oracle Giving, Oracle Volunteers. “It’s important for kids to see how they can make a difference in their own environment.”

Oracle, headquartered at Redwood Shores, also has an interest in promoting environmental education.

“The largest part of the grant is to prepare a curriculum to train teachers to use those activities with the 20,000 visitors here at Hidden Villa each year,” Overington said. “They’ll be trained in how to lead the traditional programs here, and now we have this new resource.”

For more information about the environmental education program or Hidden Villa, logon to: www.hiddenvilla.org.