Paige Manges | Director of Communications at Central Conservation
Think back to the summer of your fourth-grade year. Is there a memory that still stands out? Who were you with? Why has that moment stayed with you?
Year after year, when we reflect on the Summer Day Camps that took place over the past few months, we’re flooded with standout moments where our campers created new friendships, experienced getting completely immersed in the mud, or were pleasantly surprised by all the life happening in the marsh.
Why does this matter so much to us? Because we believe time spent connecting with nature and one another shapes the people we become. When a child grows up with a meaningful connection to the natural world, that connection becomes part of their values, encouraging them to care for their community, protect the places they love, and hold one another accountable to the world around them.
This year, our community voted The Nature Place Summer Day Camps as the Best Summer Camp in the county. This recognition rightfully belongs to more than our permanent staff, for it is the energy and passion our incredible AmeriCorps Environmental Educators bring that breathe life into our camps and make the love of the outdoors contagious.
The AmeriCorps Environmental Educators are the ones turning a walk through the prairie into an adventure, helping campers identify birds, and encouraging kids to get juuuuust a little closer to a crawling insect. They make sure each child at our camps feels welcome and knows this is a place for them. Their enthusiasm creates countless smiles, not only for campers, but for parents who see their children’s excitement for the outdoors continue days after camp.
This summer, our team ran 55 camps over 11 weeks, no small feat for a team of 12. Each Environmental Educator brought their own experiences, knowledge, perspectives, and passions to our campers. That diversity makes our programs stronger. It gives kids in our community the opportunity to learn from different people, navigate new environments, build social skills, and discover that there are many ways to experience and understand the natural world.
And that is one of the most meaningful things about AmeriCorps.
AmeriCorps creates opportunities for its members to develop skills, gain real-world experience, discover new career paths, and build connections within their communities. In turn, our community gets to meet new people, and our campers get new mentors and role models each year they return. Our programs gain new ideas and, year after year, a new group of Environmental Educators shape the experiences we hope children will carry with them for years to come.
It isn’t enough for us to simply say thank you and move on.
Our AmeriCorps Members are the backbone of our programming and a vital part of our ability to create meaningful opportunities for our community to connect with nature. Quite simply, we couldn’t do it without them.
So today, as we celebrate our summer filled with campers who’ve learned new things, we’re asking our community to celebrate something bigger: the AmeriCorps program and the people it brings into our communities. When we invest in the people who help others connect with nature, we’re investing in the next generation of environmental stewards, community members, educators, and leaders.
And maybe, years from now, one of our campers will look back on the summer of their fourth-grade year and remember the day they kissed a monarch before releasing it on its flight to Mexico and the AmeriCorps Environmental Educator who was there to inspire them to fall in love with being outside.
Photos taken by Paige Manges & Elliot Lacasse, Creative Communications AmeriCorps Member