From the Source: Raising the Next Generation of Water Stewards

A Find A Spring × Love Activists Collaboration

Some experiences shape us for life..

Like standing at a living spring. Watching water rise from the earth. Learning not from a classroom, but from the source itself.

In the summer of 2025, Find A Spring was honored to collaborate with Love Activists – a powerful mentorship program, based out of South Central Los Angeles, devoted to supporting youth in becoming compassionate, empowered leaders.

Together, we brought children on a field trip to Morning Springs – a living classroom where water, land, and reverence meet.

We wanted to bring youth into direct relationship with fresh spring water, many for the very first time. To feel it. To witness it. To know where water comes from beyond a faucet or bottle.

Because when children meet water at the source, something awakens. Connection forms and care becomes natural.

We believe the future of water protection begins with developing a strong relationship.

The Day Itself

The day at Ojai Morning Springs was tender, alive, and full of joy.

Children arrived curious and open, and quickly the land did what it does best… it welcomed them with open arms. There was laughter echoing through the water, bare feet on stone, wide smiles, and the kind of ease that happens when young bodies are given space to simply be in nature.

They soaked, splashed, and explored. New friendships formed naturally, without effort.

We watched as something softened and expanded at the same time.. as these young people connected not only with the water, but with themselves and one another. Being held by the land, by living water, created a shared sense of belonging.

Filling up bottles at the spring became a moment of reverence. A pause. An understanding that this water comes from somewhere – that it is alive, shared, and worthy of care.

This is the kind of learning that can’t be taught, only experienced.

Love Activists create the conditions for this kind of growth by supporting youth to feel safe, expressive, and empowered. Bringing that foundation into direct relationship with land and water allowed the day to unfold with authenticity, joy, and deep presence.

It was beautiful to witness their consciousness expanding, not through instruction, but through experience, laughter, connection, and communion with the natural world. 

Moments like these remind us why this work matters.

When children meet a spring, water stops being abstract.

It becomes alive and personal – something worth protecting.

These experiences plant seeds that last a lifetime. Children who understand where water comes from grow into adults who ask better questions about land, stewardship, responsibility, and care.

This is how water stewards are born.

At Find A Spring, we often say: “Connection becomes protection”.

Love Activists: Education That Builds Leaders

Love Activists is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit based in South Central, Los Angeles, dedicated t strengthening schools and empowering children to become compassionate, conscious leaders.

Their work centers emotional intelligence, creativity, self-expression, and community responsibility – giving young people the inner foundation to lead with empathy and courage.

Water stewardship is leadership. To care for water is to care for the community and to understand interdependence is to embody compassion in action.

This collaboration brings inner education and outer experience together – giving children both the tools and the lived connection to protect what sustains us all.

Learn more about Love Activists and support their mission, below.

A Devotion to Water

Find A Spring is devoted to protecting and encouraging right relationship with water via mapping springs, educating communities, advocating for protection, and building systems that honor water as a powerful, living, resource. 

Supporting youth field trips like this is part of that devotion. Because protecting water isn’t only about data or policy – it’s about restoring culture.

It’s about who we raise our children to be.

Our Give-Back Commitment

As a nonprofit, Find A Spring is committed to giving back in ways that shape the future.

Supporting youth education, field trips, and collaborations like this one is foundational to our mission. These moments create memory, reverence, and responsibility which are also the roots of long-term water protection.

A child who meets a spring carries it for life.

From the source, with devotion, for the generations to come.

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Learn how you can support Find A Spring’s Education & Protection Fund here.

Discover more about Love Activists and the powerful youth programs they lead across the Los Angeles area. Loveactivist.org,  YouTube.com/loveactivist