Oak Knoll 5th Grade · The Otters
Career Fair 2026
The Otters’
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Oak Knoll 5th graders designed this guide to downtown Menlo Park. Follow their picks and you’re guaranteed to have a good time.
The Otters spent a Career Fair session with the Downtown Menlo Fund founders learning what a nonprofit does. Then they did it themselves! They built a downtown scavenger hunt for families and came up with three ideas to make downtown even better. Everything on this page is their work.
The Mission
How Downtown Menlo Fund Works
Design
Clean streets, nice plants, and the stuff that makes a place feel good to walk around.
Vibrant Retail
Helping stores and restaurants stay open, stay full, and keep getting better.
Community
Events, spaces, and reasons to come downtown together.
Activity 1
The Otters’ Downtown Scavenger Hunt
The Otters are designing their picks at career fair. The full scavenger hunt will appear here after the event.
Things to spot on Santa Cruz Avenue
The Otters' actual favorite food stops
A real conversation challenge
History and hidden gems
What the Otters would change
The Otters’ picks for each category will appear here after career fair.
Activity 2
If We Ran Downtown Menlo Fund for a Day…
Three groups of Otters, one per focus area. Each group came up with one concrete thing they’d change or add to make downtown better.
The Design group’s idea will appear here after career fair.
The Vibrant Retail group’s idea will appear here after career fair.
The Community group’s idea will appear here after career fair.
This page was created with Oak Knoll Elementary School 5th graders as part of the 2026 Career Fair to learn about what it means to work at a nonprofit.