Sharon Gamson Danks
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Sharon Gamson Danks | |
|---|---|
| Education | Princeton, BA 1993[1] |
| Alma mater | Berkeley MA, 2000 |
| Occupation | City planner |
| Years active | 16+ |
| Known for | Asphalt to Ecosystems[2][3] |
| Awards | ASLA 2012[4][5] Ashoka Fellow (2017)[6][7] |
| Website | www |
Sharon Gamson Danks is an American environmental planner and landscape designer known for her advocacy of environmentally friendly schoolyards.[2][8][9][10][11] In 2013, she founded the nonprofit Green Schoolyards America to promote ecologically healthy city schoolyards.[12][13] She designed outdoor playgrounds with blooming gardens, shaded ponds and nature trails.[14][15] Her book Asphalt to Ecosystems: Design Ideas for Schoolyard Transformation describes ways to transform the "traditional school ground’s slab of asphalt into edible gardens"[3][1][16][17] and it received an American Society of Landscape Architects award in 2012.[4][5]
In May 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Danks, along with Green Schoolyards America and several other organizations, founded the National COVID-19 Outdoor Learning Initiative to help American K-12 schools move into fresh air spaces to reduce virus transmission.[13][18][19] She helped create an online resource called the National Outdoor Learning Library to help educators plan their outdoor learning efforts.[20] The online library features templates for constructing outdoor classroom spaces and lesson plans.[21]
She is based in the San Francisco Bay Area.