At Earth Day festivals in Sunnyvale and Santa Cruz, participants celebrated the pleasures of life lived simply and locally for the sake of the planet. On the Albany waterfront in the East Bay, children and parents searched the beach for trash and treasure, created art with found objects, and thanked the earth as they cleaned up the shoreline. At these and other venues in northern California, environmental pollution was a top concern.

Meanwhile at Stanford University, the role of globalization was raised at a fundraiser for water wells in Africa. The Raging Grannies sang "How Far to the Well, Sister" and encouraged students to continue their work addressing poverty brought on by the lack of safe, reliable sources of water in Kenya, Malawi, and many other parts of Africa.

At the Stanford event more than 60 students carried water in buckets across campus to bring attention to their cause. According to a World Health Organization/UNICEF joint monitoring project of 2004, daily clean water access is not a reality for 1.1 billion people in the world. Women suffer inordinately when water is not readily available, as the task of obtaining enough for household needs generally falls to them. The senior activist Grannies urged students to question globalization and institutions like the World Bank and IMF, and the effect of their policies on poverty in the world future generations stand to inherit.

Photos: 1 | 2 | 3 | Nuru International