volunteer

Education: Teenagers Learn Civic Responsibility at Detroit Zoo

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Volunteers at the Detroit Zoo and Belle Isle Nature Center play a hugely important role in our operations. They interact with visitors, pass on important stories about the animals that live here, share our mission of Celebrating and Saving Wildlife and facilitate experiences that engage our guests in creating a better tomorrow for all animals.

Our volunteer corps donates more than 100,000 hours of service every year. We have opportunities for individuals and groups 13 years of age and older to assist us during special events, to greet guests as they arrive at the Zoo and provide directions throughout our 125 acres, and to engage with visitors in areas including the Polk Penguin Conservation Center, the Wildlife Interpretive Gallery, the Australian Outback Adventure and the Arctic Ring of Life.

This past spring, we amped up our recruitment efforts for the Volunteen Corps, which resulted in our numbers tripling. This a fantastic opportunity for local teenagers to earn community service hours while gaining leadership experience and building communication skills in a professional work setting. Volunteering not only builds a teen’s resume by adding valuable skills and experience, but it helps develop a sense of civic responsibility. Volunteering at the Zoo also allows these students to spend time in nature while learning about animals and the environment and how we can all be great stewards of this planet. The Volunteens who’ve worked with us are highly engaged and enthusiastic about interacting with guests of all ages – especially children – and sharing all they have learned during their time here.

Fifteen thousand visitors have interacted with our more than 80 Volunteens since June. Many of those participated in a hands-on activity that explored how sound energy travels while sharing an important animal welfare message. Stationed just outside the entrance to the Holden Reptile Conservation Center, teens demonstrated how sound travels and allowed guests to try their hand at making sound waves move by sanding sugar on a taut plastic surface. The teens then skillfully steered the conversation toward the concept that tapping on the glass of the reptile habitats allows sound and vibrations to travel into the habitat space, possibly disturbing if not upsetting the animals that live on the other side.

As the weather cools down, the Zoo Corps is helping us with Zoo Boo, our annual Halloween celebration held on weekends in October. The Spooky Science Laboratory is crawling with trick-or-treaters and our teen volunteers assist them as they explore pumpkin and squash guts, predict how many mosquitos a bat eats in a single night, and determine how neighborhood wildlife can do your pumpkin carving for you.

 

We are also working with our Zoo Corps to tell stories about our mission while building communication skills. A small cohort of teens participated in storytelling training and are sharing the real-life stories of animals that have been rescued by the Detroit Zoological Society as well as tales of wildlife conservation work we are involved in locally and internationally.

Starting in November, our teens will be doing science activities on Sunday evenings during our annual holiday celebration, Wild Lights. Hands-on activities will be sure to delight guests as they enjoy the more than five million lights illuminating buildings, trees and more than 230 animal sculptures.

If you know a teenager who would be interested in joining the Volunteen Zoo Corps, please encourage him or her to apply! We are currently recruiting teens for a mid-November training session. Learn more: https://detroitzoo.org/support/volunteer/

– Claire Lannoye-Hall is a curator of education for the Detroit Zoological Society.

Make a Difference at the Zoo

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Saturday, October 22 is National Make a Difference Day and we’re celebrating with our incredible volunteer corps at the Detroit Zoo. From 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., guests can take part in a scavenger hunt as well as family-friendly hands-on activities to celebrate how volunteers make a difference at the Zoo.

Make a Difference for Birds

Guests can cut out window decals that help to prevent bird strikes, which kill millions of birds in the U.S. every year. One can be taken home and one will be left for use at the Zoo (while supplies last). Information will be available on other ways to help birds using items such as window tape, screens and paint.

Make a Difference for the Planet

Recycled T-shirts will be available for guests to turn into tote bags. Leftover millage signs (the ones with the cute animal faces) will be available to turn into journal covers, bulletin boards and other creative uses guests can find for them (while supplies last). Recycling plastic materials such as these signs helps keep them from winding up in landfills where they don’t disintegrate.

Volunteer Scavenger Hunt

Upon arriving at the Zoo, guests will be offered to take a “discovery tour”. This tour will direct visitors to locations around the Zoo where they will meet volunteers on duty and learn about what they do. Guests who complete the tour, fill out a form and turn it in at the Ford Education Center will be entered into a drawing for two tickets to Wild Lights – six winners will be drawn at 2 p.m. Guests will also receive a token item for participating. Guests who chose to do so may also include their email address on their scavenger hunt form in order to receive more information about either the teen or adult volunteer programs for Spring 2017. Volunteer Services staff will be on hand to collect the scavenger hunt forms and talk more about volunteer opportunities at the Zoo.

We hope you join us and learn more about our fabulous volunteers and how you too can make a difference! Also taking place this day is our encore Smashing Pumpkins event, when animals including the chimpanzees, polar bears, giraffes and “grizzly boys” are given Halloween goodies to eat, play with, roll around and smash. Learn more and view the schedule here.

Education: Teaching in the Amazon

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The Amazon rainforest is an incredible place, the subject of countless novels and stories. Discovered, explored and exploited for generations, millions of people call this biodiverse and globally important region home. The area is often referred to as the “lungs of the earth” as the plethora of plant life grabs carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and replaces it with life-essential oxygen. In partnership with a Peruvian non-profit organization, CONAPAC, the Detroit Zoological Society (DZS) is preserving the rainforest, one child at a time.

The DZS has partnered with CONAPAC since 1999, supporting children and teachers in rural areas of the rainforest. Each spring, more than 3,000 students and teachers receive a year’s worth of basic school supplies, purchased with money donated by individuals from all over the world. To complement the supplies, all teachers are required to attend a professional development workshop to enhance their teaching skills and increase student literacy.

This year, the teacher workshops were held in the city of Indiana, in Loreto, Peru, during the last week of June. I attended the workshops to observe first-hand what the investment of time, energy and resources was producing. I was incredibly impressed. This year there were two sets of workshops; one for teachers working in communities on the Amazon, the other for teachers who are working in the communities off the Napo River and its tributaries. The non-profit organization, El Conocimiento Se Comparte (which roughly translates to ‘the sharing of knowledge’), facilitated the content of the workshops on mathematics, reading comprehension and linguistics.

El Conocimiento Se Comparte is a U.S. entity, composed of four siblings who were born and raised in Peru. All four moved to the U.S. as adults to pursue their individual careers. Their goal is to share their talent and passion for teaching with a broad audience, including their home country of Peru. The CONAPAC team coordinated the location and logistical aspects of the workshop, and the El Conocimiento Se Comparte group brought their passion and talent.

For the most part, I was a participant of the workshop proceedings. I sat through each session, gleaning as much information as I could, completely immersed in the native language and enjoying every moment of it. I watched as teachers engaged with one another and with the presenters, asking for more explanation when necessary, inquiring about specific student needs and adaptations, and taking copious notes every step of the way.

Over the course of the next month or two, the board of education in the region will visit the teachers in their schools to observe if they have implemented the new teaching strategies. If they have, they will be eligible for a certificate, which could earn them a raise or a future promotion. When the CONAPAC and the DZS team conducts end-of-year evaluations in November, we’ll also be looking for signs that teachers have implemented the strategies and report back to our donors and the team.

The conservation work in the Amazon continues to be incredibly rewarding, yet also challenging. By providing the opportunity for an education based in conservation, we are empowering the next generation of children who call the rainforest home to protect the ecologically vital ecosystem.

For more information on the Amazon Rainforest Adopt-A-School program, including how to participate in annual deliveries or to support a school financially, visit http://detroitzoo.org/support/give/ or email clannoyehall@dzs.org.

– Claire Lannoye-Hall is a curator of education for the Detroit Zoological Society.

Notes from the Field: Passion for Peru

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The fall trip to the Peruvian Amazon as part of the Detroit Zoological Society’s Adopt-A-School program has come to a close. Over the course of two weeks, our team of 21 staff members and volunteers were able to visit all 53 communities involved in the program. Even though each of these communities is facing challenges, they have shown their commitment to protecting the rainforest. The families clearly see the value of their children’s education.

To accomplish the evaluation for all the Adopt-A-School communities in a two-week period, we rely on volunteers from the city of Iquitos. Volunteerism is not a common practice in Peruvian culture; however the concept is growing. The volunteers this year included people in the fields of education, environmental sustainability and agriculture. The team was enthusiastic and dedicated, which was evidenced by the smiles of the children and hugs from community leaders. Their passion shined in the schools where they sang songs, told jokes and played games to help ensure students were comfortable with them before the evaluations began.

Volunteers support this program throughout the year, and now that the evaluations are complete, we are beginning to focus on our plans for next year. The Adopt-A-School program would not be able to function without the support of our volunteers from around the world. Without them and their contributions, we wouldn’t be able to deliver the donated school supplies to the communities at the beginning of the Peruvian school year. Our program volunteers contribute financially through a mandatory trip donation as well as providing their physical support and presence while they are in Peru.

If you’d like experience these beautiful places and meet some incredible people, consider volunteering with the Adopt-A-School program and join us in our travels to the rainforest in the spring: http://conapac.org/2016AmazonRainforestiBookletShort.pdf. If traveling to the Amazon is not for you, and you would like to contribute in a different way, please find a link to donate here: http://detroitzoo.org/support/give/adopt-a-school/.

– Carla Van Kampen is a curator of education for the Detroit Zoological Society. The Adopt-A-School program provides donated educational materials and supplies for schools in rural Amazonia. The DZS has partnered with Conservacion de la Naturaleza Amazonica del Peru (CONAPAC) in this conservation and education program since 1999.