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A Day in the Volunteer Life: Rock Creek Conservancy

Written by Nancy Erickson, Communications Coordinator of the Catalogue for Philanthropy

Over the course of 33 miles, Rock Creek meanders from a spring in Montgomery County, through 9 miles of Rock Creek Park in Washington, DC, and alongside residential and industrial areas until it finally disperses into the Potomac River. In the DC section alone, over 2 million people visit this local treasure every year. Rock Creek Conservancy is the only nonprofit solely dedicated to its preservation through their people-powered efforts. Every year, over 5,000 volunteers join in to restore Rock Creek, and on National Public Lands Day (NPLD), I was honored to be one of them.

Led by the National Environmental Education Foundation (NEEF), this national restoration event takes place every year on the last Saturday of September. On this day, volunteers across the country come out to celebrate our public lands through public service. Earlier this year, Rock Creek Conservancy’s event in Rock Creek Park was honored as the 2019 signature site!

It was an exemplary autumn morning in Rock Creek Park — clear and crisp. As I approached the welcome tents, I was impressed by the scale of the event. There were not only sign-in sheets for volunteers, but also members of the media! Tables were lined with free t-shirts, water bottles, sunglasses, pastries, and coffee! There was even a mascot walking around! …of what appeared to be a bison dressed as a doctor? (It was later explained to me that he was promoting doctors prescribing nature to patients, an intriguing and promising idea.)

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After listening to some enthusiastic speeches from the event sponsors, we split into color groups to begin our tasks for the day.

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Volunteers had been given 5 choices of work projects, each associated with a different color:

  • Red: Invasive Plant Removal at the Trail 9 Mini-Oasis
  • Orange: Horse Stables & Maintenance Yard
  • Yellow: Weed Warrior Walk
  • Green: Trash Trek
  • Blue: Nature Center Rail Repair and Restoration

I had chosen blue. My group of fellow blue wrist-band-wearers convened. While other groups left the area to do work around the park, Team Blue stayed put to provide service for the Nature Center and Planetarium. We could choose to do one of three tasks: railings, bee hotels, or invasive plant removal. I joined the railing crew. The Nature Center is wheelchair-accessible, but the railings around the back were in disrepair and peeling. We used sand paper and bristles to scrape off the flaking paint chips — but not before laying down plastic tarp of course, since losing paint chips into the woods would have obviously undermined the spirit of protecting our public lands.

After making the railing acceptably smooth, we then spray-painted the railings with a new shiny glossy coat. We held up pieces of cardboard while spraying to make sure that we didn’t paint passersby or plants. Although the pre-event informational email had clearly instructed us to wear long sleeves, I had rolled up my sleeves, thus defeating the purpose. It wasn’t until the end of the day that I realized that I had accidentally spray-painted my arms in black paint speckle. Whoops.

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After finishing the railing, I joined the bee hotel group. What’s a “bee hotel,” you may ask? It’s a collection of bamboo shoots just the right size for a bee to get cozy in, specifically for the bee species which are more solitary than the type we usually think of. These hotels are part of the park’s effort to combat bee extinction, a troubling recent phenomenon which can potentially have devastating effects on our planet’s ecosystem.

My task was to brush out the bamboo’s inner dust with a combination of shaking and using a smaller bamboo stick. *Cough cough*. Fortunately, I didn’t disturb any creepy crawlies that might have been hiding inside.

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Then, I passed on the cleared-out shoots to the volunteer team doing a deep clean with vinegar and then gluing them down in the house frames. Earlier we had learned the importance of securing the bamboo, since even a slight tilt would send them rolling everywhere with a delightfully hollow cacophony of clinks.

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After a couple of hours, we had constructed two bee hotels and finished refurbishing all of the railings! Our Rock Creek Conservancy team leader Scott thanked us for our hard work in contributing to NPLD and we dispersed. As we returned to the front side of the center, we were rewarded by free catered lunches, a live DJ, and a voucher for free entry into any national park. As mentioned before, this was not a typical volunteer experience!

Over 175 volunteers showed up to support Rock Creek Park that day. Nationwide, over 150,000 volunteers participated at 1,000 sites! It was exciting to be a small part of a much larger communal effort, which was highlighted in this video.

You don’t have to wait until next year’s National Public Lands Day to volunteer with Rock Creek Conservancy! Most volunteer experiences with them don’t include free swag, but they do include making friends and making a difference:

  • Throughout the week you can find volunteer events to sign up for. These don’t require any training or long-term commitment. Just register and show up ready to help out!
  • If you’d like to make a recurring commitment, you can become a Stream Team leader, by “adopting” a segment of Rock Creek that you maintain together with friends, family, and neighbors.
  • Weed Warriors are recurring volunteers that help stem the growth (pun intended) of invasive, non-native plants. The next training takes place on November 23rd.
  • If your company would like to host a team-building exercise that gives back to your local community, then reach out to Rock Creek Conservancy staff about creating a custom group volunteer opportunity.
  • In the spring, they host the Rock Creek Extreme Cleanup, picking up trash along Rock Creek at over 70 locations. Mark your calendars now!

In a time of dwindling park financing, Rock Creek Conservancy staff work hard to create volunteer opportunities so that everyone in the DC region can enjoy local nature. These are especially well-suited for those with intellectually intense jobs whose impact feels removed and abstract. Volunteering with Rock Creek Conservancy is rewarding, invigorating work where you can immediately witness the difference you’ve accomplished. Volunteering to protect the Rock Creek watershed and urban wilderness feels good and does good.

Amplifying Voices for Racial Equity in Montgomery County

Written by Tyler French, Innovation and Partnerships Director of Story Tapestries

On October 5, 2019, a group of family, friends, new acquaintances, and strangers gathered at the Strathmore Mansion. We were there to share in poetry, storytelling, and conversations about race, difference, and connection. Holding together this constellation is the Amplify US! Initiative, a collaboration between Story Tapestries, Arts on the Block and Impact Silver Spring to unite the voices of the past with those of our future in a dynamic series of workshops, performances and community dialogue. Amplify US! is committed to furthering racial equity in Montgomery County by amplifying underrepresented voices, creating platforms for advocacy and connection, and bringing together community members for necessary conversations.

Amplify US! is a community-led initiative and, as such, is difficult to describe to anyone who hasn’t attended. It’s difficult to capture in words the feeling of the room. The conversations were not necessarily easy or without discomfort, but all were warm and caring. They felt urgent and necessary. Every person who showed up was meant to be there. People lingered longer than usual, already late for a Saturday evening. The performances and conversation created a kind of gravitational force and held us there.

Regie Cabico, Story Tapestries Master Teaching Artist, spoken word poet and performer, MCed the evening. He shared the stage with two professional performers, Jenny Lares and Dwyane B. and Story Tapestries youth and community members, Charles Stokes, Glory Egedigwe, Karina Gorham, and Mimi Hassanein. Each read poems or shared stories ranging in topics from immigration to our education system, the legacy of slavery in the United States, and spaces for finding joy and resilience. It was particularly striking to witness Glory’s excitement when she realized Jenny had performed for her when she was younger. Michelle Faulkner-Forson shared an excerpt from an in-process film project about Amplify US!, documenting the impact of these spaces for storytelling and listening.

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The second half of an Amplify US! event flips the script, asking audience members to join in by having facilitated conversations with each other. Carolyn Lowery of Impact Silver Spring facilitated the conversations, asking audience members to share with each other answers to questions about racial identity, moments of discomfort or disconnect, and moments of connection. Primed by the performances, audience members leapt into conversation with each other, discussing aspects of their lives rarely shared with strangers. The conversations engaged intergenerational connections across race and nationality and the event spilled over its end time as audience members were reluctant to end their conversations.

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Why this urgent need for dialogue?

In 2017, Montgomery County’s Police reported an 26% increase in bias incidents compared to the prior year. Of the incidents reported, roughly half were motivated by bias toward religion and half were motivated by bias toward a race or ethnicity. Story Tapestries took this report as a call to action and collaborated with other local organizations, including the Strathmore and Impact Silver Spring, to call upon our wide networks of concerned individuals to begin meeting and form a Task Force. These community meetings led to the design of what we now call the Amplify US! Initiative.

The statistics highlighted in the Montgomery County Police Department report not only guide the Amplify US! initiative but also filter into our programming across the county. We choose artists in whom youth can see themselves – so we’ve increased the number of male artists involved in these programs to serve as role models and mentors. We’ve also collaborated with organizations that serve the demographics most frequently involved in bias incidents – for example partnering with Latin American Youth Center and their GED program and with the Correctional Facility. Our artistic and administrative staff have been trained to lead dialogue circles and use conflict resolution techniques to support their ability to infuse this aspect into every program we lead and into how we operate and collaborate.

The October 5 performance kicked-off this year’s Amplify US! season. Starting in January, Amplify US! will offer free workshops in communities across Montgomery County. Participants in those workshops will work with artists in multiple art forms and a facilitator to cultivate and share their stories. Similar to the community members described above, those who wish to will have an opportunity to perform in free public performances alongside professional artists after this season’s workshops conclude in Spring 2020.

We want the texture of your voice and your experience to enrich our next conversations. To find out more about upcoming events for Amplify US! and Story Tapestries, please visit our website storytapestries.org – or reach out directly to me at tyler@storytapestries.org.

The October 5 workshop and performance event were made possible by funding from:

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Poets & Writers

Expanding Urban Debate For All

Written by David Trigaux, Program Director of the Washington Urban Debate League

In 2015, a group of former debaters surveyed the educational landscape in D.C. and lamented the lack of high-quality debate programs available for public school students. Debate is a transformative educational experience, but it was only available to students at elite private institutions. They decided to do something about it and founded the Washington Urban Debate League (WUDL), a non-profit dedicated to improving student outcomes through participation in competitive policy debate.

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​Debate is a game-changer for students, improving their GPAs, test scores, graduation rates, attendance, and more. Debate improves college attendance and graduation rates, and is one of the best ways to get a non-athletic scholarship. It improves self-confidence and resilience, and even makes students 3 times more likely to vote! Unfortunately, it was only available for students who already had a leg up.

In our first year, we served more than 100 students from 6 schools. Since then, the WUDL has grown rapidly, and was named the Outstanding Urban Debate League by the National Association of Urban Debate Leagues in 2018. Since the 2017-18 school year, we have served more than 500 students at 39 schools each year in our After School Debate program, and several thousand through our curricular programs. As a one-man operation, however, we plateaued, unable to serve more students and more schools without more capacity.

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For the first four years of our operation, I was the only staff member of the organization. We have a fantastic pool of volunteers that has largely made this tremendous growth possible, but there are limits to what volunteers can do, and when they can be available. These first four years, I’ve had to do everything from direct instruction of students and teachers to fundraising, communications, and volunteer recruitment and management…all at the same time. As we grew, I tried to do more and more myself, but there are limits to what a single person can sustainably do.

Last year, however, we were named “one of the best” local non-profits by the Greater Washington Catalogue for Philanthropy. The Catalogue offers training sessions to non-profit leaders through a program called the Learning Commons, instructing on everything from donor management to program evaluation. I’ve been to more than 10 workshops, and have learned so much more (shout out to Matt Gayer, who ran most of them!) about how to be a successful, intentional non-profit manager. I can work smarter instead of harder (something my fiancee appreciates).

 

Thanks to the training and financial resources provided by the Catalogue, and the growth of our donor base, the WUDL is growing again rapidly. We’ve hired a program coordinator, Dara Davis, who has taken more than 30 schools off my plate, and has been an immense help developing curriculum and building relationships with a new generation of our students. We’ve also hired a fundraising consulting firm to significantly expand our fundraising capacity to ensure we have the tools needed to make debate available for more students. We are back to work towards our dream of making a high quality debate program available to every single public school student in the region.

This fall, we’ve taken a big step in that direction in D.C. After serving 39 schools last year, we are adding 15 new schools, all across D.C.:

  • Basis DC(PCS, Ward 2)
  • Bard Early College (DCPS, Ward 7)
  • Browne EC (DCPS, Ward 5)
  • Center City Brightwood (PCS, Ward 4)
  • Cesar Chavez (PCS, Ward 7)
  • Friendship Armstrong (PCS, Ward 5
  • Friendship Collegiate (PCS, Ward 7)
  • Friendship Tech (PCS, Ward 8)
  • Ida B Wells (DCPS, Ward 4)
  • Kipp Somerset (PCS Ward 7)
  • Oyster Adams (DCPS, Ward 3)
  • Paul (PCS, Ward 4)
  • School Without Walls (DCPS, Ward 3)
  • Stuart Hobson (DCPS, Ward 6)
  • Theodore Roosevelt (DCPS Ward 5)

We expect more than 200 new debaters across these schools to participate in just their first year, laying the groundwork for hundreds more in years to come. We aren’t done growing yet, and won’t stop making great opportunities available for students in D.C.

If you have a student in a D.C. public school, sign them up for their school’s urban debate team, or come out to volunteer at one of our tournaments. You can learn more at www.urbandebatewashingtondc.org

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A Day in the Volunteer Life: Common Good City Farm

Written by Nancy Erickson, Communications Coordinator for the Catalogue for Philanthropy

Picture this: It’s Wednesday morning. You’ve been answering emails for two hours straight. Your eyes ache from your screen. Your office has no windows and smells a little like stale coffee. For lunch, you eat something greasy and instant.

Now picture this: You’re breathing in fresh air and kneeling in a garden. You smell basil and freshly tilled soil. You hear a bee buzzing nearby. Your gloves are caked in dirt as you pull weeds. The sun warms your skin. You have gathered a basket of fresh produce, ready for today’s lunch.

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If the second scenario sounds a little more appealing to you than the first, then consider embracing your inner farmer by volunteering at Common Good City Farm. This is what I did recently, and I recommend it for anyone who would appreciate a break from their work to reconnect with nature and accomplish some good.

Common Good City Farm uses their plot of farmland to promote sustainable agriculture and healthy nutrition in their local community. Their many programs include selling fresh produce to community members and businesses, employing high schoolers over the summer, teaching children about nutrition, and providing the community with a wide variety of workshops. You can learn more about their programs here.

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I signed up for their Community Volunteer Day, an event specifically designed for folks who only want to try their hand at farming for a one-time commitment. It was a beautiful Saturday morning when I arrived a little after 9. As I approached the main entrance, I was struck by the explosion of GREEN right in the middle of the city block. The lot was immediately adjacent to a playground and surrounded by apartment buildings. Inside the gate I saw an open shelter, with camping-esque kitchen ware and Christmas lights strung around the rafters. Since I had arrived early, I watched staff give an orientation to the City Farmers, the longer term volunteers who would be guiding the first-time volunteers for the morning.

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My first task of the morning was to slice lemons for the water cooler for incoming volunteers. Hydration and sunblock would be important that day–it was hot! I also helped wiped down tables as fellow one-time volunteers flowed in.

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At 9:30, all 34 volunteers received a tour of the farm (a typical Community Volunteer Day gets 30 people). There were four tasks for volunteers to choose between:

  1. Prepping spinach beds in the hoop house
  2. Widening beds for winter preparations
  3. Harvesting basil plants (to be sold at Bacio Pizzeria!)
  4. Tilling the soil along the outside fence

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I chose option 4. This involved pulling weeds and removing rocks. Quite a bit of rocks. An insane amount of rocks. A passerby slyly congratulated us on our fruitful rock harvest. It was highly satisfying work and surprisingly relaxing.
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In my opinion, gardening together is a more engaging environment to socialize with people than the typical DC happy hour; conversation felt less forced and more organic (no pun intended). I enjoyed getting to know other volunteers’ motivations for coming this morning. Some reasons I heard included:

  • They loved gardening and needed a contrast to their Monday-Friday DC professional careers.
  • He wanted to get to know his community better; he lived only a few blocks away but had only recently heard about Common Good City Farm.
  • He had been feeling discouraged about climate change and wanted to tangibly do something.
  • She wanted to make friends.

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One of Common Good’s missions is to “contribute to a sense of connectedness, vibrancy and sense of place.” In my short time volunteering there, I felt this connection to the neighborhood. Urban farming is a way to connect people to healthy food, nature, and each other when they might otherwise remain siloed apart in their separate apartments. Community members can come to the weekly farmer’s market for Common Good’s fresh produce (which participates with WIC, SNAP, Produce Plus, and the Senior Farmers Market Nutrition Program). At one point some local kids grabbed gloves and joined us in picking out rocks. Apparently this was a common way for local kids to come have fun and keep busy on a weekend.

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At noon we finished and surveyed the fruits of our labor. After hours of sweating and getting our fingernails dirty, we had managed to remove a good portion of the rocks from the land. It looked remarkably more garden-like. Go team!

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Then, all the volunteers were treated to a lunch made primarily from vegetables grown by Common Good. It was a vegan’s cornucopia: organic, fresh, plant-based, locally sourced. Food always tastes great after working up an appetite and people happily enjoyed the meal and each other’s company until there were hardly any leftovers. The group dynamic was satisfied, warm, and communal. After lunch, people peeled away while I and a few others stayed to clean dishes and wipe down tables.

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If this sounds like a refreshing and enjoyable experience, then consider volunteering with Common Good City Farm. If you only want to come farm for a one-time commitment like I did, then you can sign up for a Community Volunteer Day. In the past these occasions only took place twice a year, but beginning in 2020, Common Good will be meeting demand for volunteer opportunities by providing Community Volunteer Days every month!

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Or, if you’d like to get more deeply involved, you can sign up to become a City Farmer. This is a 12-week commitment to help out on the farm once a week alongside 5-10 fellow volunteers. Being a City Farmer provides a sense of ownership over the produce, builds skills and relationships, and lifts up Common Good by accomplishing more difficult tasks. This opportunity is especially useful for high school students who need to fill service requirements at a single location.

If you’re interested in getting your hands dirty and volunteering with Common Good City Farm, then check out their volunteer page. I loved my time there, and I am sure that you will too.

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