January 2010 - Parks & Recreation - 17

Junior volunteers (left) Christian Name
and Deona Lane at the kickoff Roots
& Shoots " Invasive Species Removal
Revolution " project.

of cool posters of kids volunteering, and
positive quotes to inspire kids to care
and dream of making a positive difference in their community.

Acting on an idea
During our summer camp session, a
parent walked into our office to sign her
son up for camp. I just happened to walk
by and overheard her mention the bulletin board and ask the registration programmer if we had a volunteer program
for kids. I stopped in my tracks, shook
hands with the parent, introduced myself. I told her that we didn't have one yet,
but I was determined to figure out a way
to soon start one. The parent grinned as
she said, " Hi, I'm Susana, and I'm the International Tour Coordinator for Dr. Jane
Goodall. Jane has a global youth volunteer program called Roots & Shoots
[R&S] that would be perfect for your
center. "
Susana explained that R&S promotes
care and concern for the environment,
the animal, and human communities.
She then showed me a brochure with
these words from Dr. Jane, " Roots creep
underground everywhere and make a
firm foundation. Shoots seem very weak,
but to reach the light, they can break
open brick walls. Imagine that the brick
walls are all the problems we have inflicted on our planet. Hundreds of thousands of roots & shoots, hundreds of
thousands of young people around the
world, can break through these walls.
We can change the world. "
I learned all I could about the program from the manual and online at
www.rootsandshoots.org. The R&S program seamlessly meshed with our FCPA
mission and goals. By having a program
associated with Dr. Jane Goodall, it
would give instant validation and recognition to anything that we would do with
this junior volunteer program. This was
the type of program we had been hoping
to implement in our recreation center. I

Roots & Shoots summer camper
volunteers (above), Tatum Deyo,
Madison Deyo, Grace Hillkirk, Maggie
Bell, Kate Kennedy, Cara Mazella, Vicki
Russell help with a river bank clean up
project at Riverbend Park in Fairfax
County, Virginia.

approached my immediate bosses-
Park Manager Marcellous Cooper and
Park Services Volunteer Director Sousan
Frankeberger-with the idea of a R&S Jr.
Volunteer Program. They gave me the
go ahead to baby step a pilot program.
Our county elementary schools and
summer camps promote the national
Character Counts! (CC!) program. CC!
promotes the six pillars of character:
Trustworthiness, responsibility, caring,
citizenship, respect, and fairness. We
thought this was a perfect opportunity
to teach kids about volunteering, philanthropy, and the importance of not only

doing well, but also doing good. We felt
it was important to teach kids at an early age the importance of giving back to
their community, and what it means to be
part of a community.
Technically, there is not an age limit
on who can be part of the international
R&S program. There are college-age as
well as older adult R&S groups. There are
over 9,000 R&S groups in 96 countries
around the world. However, we created
a Jr. Volunteer application that paralleled
our existing adult volunteer application,
but was for children under 18.
Because we already had an adult volunteer program in place, implementing a
junior program was relatively easy. The
kids in our pilot program could begin at
age 8. We encouraged parents to volunteer with the children under the age of
10. Parents would sign up on our existing Short Term Group Volunteer form.
Safety measures are in place for our
summer camper drop off and pick ups,
and we modified those forms to fit our
R&S group project needs. If kids over 10
years old were going to volunteer without an older sibling or chaperone (over
16 years old), then a parent must show a
photo ID to sign their child in and out of
the activity.
Once we had a program design, the
recreation center paid the minimal annual R&S membership fee to the Jane Goodall Institute (we refrained from charging a
fee to the kids). On June 29, 2007, Spring
Hill Recreation Center became the first
parks and recreation facility in the United
States to partner with the Jane Goodall Institute's Roots & Shoots program.
We had hundreds of kids in our center during our existing summer camps.
We felt this was the perfect opportunity

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Parks & Recreation

January 2010 - Parks & Recreation

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