Among the many summer camps available to Leon County young people, one will focus on protecting the area’s environment.
This camp is a partnership involving MoLab, which is headed by Trish Hanson.
“Those of you who don’t know MoLab – which we hope a lot of people do – can visit our site: tallymolab.org,” Hanson said. “But we’ve partnered this summer with the City of Tallahassee’s ‘Think About Personal Pollution’ or ‘TAPP’ program. So we are going to provide an 8-week series of investigative workshops for the benefit of students that are attending city parks and rec summer camp programs at multiple sites. It’s an environmental science education program, so we’re super-excited about that!”
Parks and Rec Supervisor Mario Palmientieri is the City’s site partner in the project.
“The sites that the MoLab folks are going to are five community center sites: Jack McLean Park; Lawrence & Gregory Center; the Jake Gaither Center; Laverne Paine & Walker-Ford. All of those centers will benefit from the program.”
Perhaps next year, Palmientieri speculated, the program might be expanded to other sites such as Myers Park, Winthrop Park, and Meridian Park. But in the meantime, Hanson said the campers will receive fun but comprehensive education in good environmental stewardship.
“(We’ll) have the kids understanding what non-point source pollution is, which is pollution that can’t be traced to one point or source. They’ll also their individual everyday lives have on non-point source pollution and through a series of interactive, hands-on, experimentation activities, they’re going to learn sustainable practices that will help reduce their negative impact and turn into a positive impact on our very important water resources,” she said.
The camp at the Smith-Williams Community Center will run from June 5th through July 28th. The other five locations will have their camps June 12th through August 4th. Palmientieri said campers should register for the camp location they’ll be attending.
“All of our general information for our playgrounds and summer camp program is on: www.talgov.com. Depending upon if they want to go to one of the sites – like Jack McLean for instance – they just need to go to Jack McLean to sign up, or they can register on-line. Everything does stop June 2nd so we have time to finalize our list, check our numbers and all that. And then on June 12th when we actually start camp, they can register again in the morning of if they haven’t done so already.”
For more details about the camp program itself: www.tallymolab.org or: www.tappwater.org.
