LITTLE ROCK — Starting this summer, young people have the opportunity to appreciate Arkansas state parks in a new way by participating in an educational program that encourages seeing, smelling and listening to what the parks have to offer.
The kids will have a chance to meet people who contribute to the parks on many levels, including law enforcement officials, rescue workers and hazardous material handlers. They will complete service projects - such as picking up trash - and are asked to share their impressions of the parks - good and bad - with park leadership.
The Arkansas State Parks Explorer Program, intended for children 6 to 14, uses a State Park Explorer Field Guide - a pocket-size, accordion-folded, to-do list of tasks - intended to help children get to know and appreciate the state parks.
Those who complete a series of nine activities ranging from service projects to researching park histories will earn the title Arkansas State Park Explorer.
The field guides are available free at any state park facility. Participants are encouraged to ask a uniformed park official for the guide, which lists activities in four categories - discover, prepare, connect and share. Once they complete the tasks, they earn a badge and certificate and are honored in a small completion ceremony.
“Our staff has been instructed to make a very big deal of it,” said Kelly Farrell, Arkansas State Parks field interpreter. “In the camping parks, there is traditionally an evening program, andmany people will come from the campgrounds and cabins. There could be 50 or 100 people there. The staff will open the program with a ceremony to award that day’s park Explorers.”
A few field guides were distributed in parks this month. The program officially begins in July.
“We are trying to build a more conservation-minded population who understand the deeper values of state parks beyond fun,” Farrell said.
“Long term, our youth now will be our voters in the future [who] will vote to support state parks, to fund state parks, to help us continue to make sure we have state parks generation after generation,” Farrell said.
“We talk ... in state parks how we’re in the forever business. Petit Jean, Lake Ouachita andVillage Creek ... those places are places where grandchildren were taken by their grandparents and now are bringing their grandchildren.”
The Explorer program replaces the Junior Naturalist program, which began in the 1970s. The new field guide asks participants about their reactions to the parks and parkrelated activities, whereas the Junior Naturalist brochure only required participants to record something they learned at the parks.
“The new program still has the same components, but instead of writing something they learned, we have them write ‘A way I connected my mind ...’ and ‘A way I connected my heart ... [to the park],’ because we really believe the way people buy into parks is to make intellectual and emotional connections,” Farrellsaid.
When participants complete the program, state park employees send a follow-up letter to the participant’s home to remind the Explorer of the pledge they took in their completion ceremony:
I promise to love, respect, and protect all Arkansas state parks. I will continue to explore the history and landscape of these special places, and I will share what I discover with my friends and family. Now and always, Explorers show we care.
The program, which is free to participants, is paid for by the Arkansas State Parks operations budget. The production of the field guides, certificatesand badges costs $1.80 per set. Parks officials originally ordered 5,000 guides, but expect they’ll need more as the summer progresses.
“We don’t put the brochures in a brochure rack in part because we want the youth or their families to have to engage with our staff,” Farrell said. “But also, it’s a little bit more expensive ... brochure to produce than just a paper flier so we don’t put them out just for free-taking, [but] it’s free if they ask for it.”
Family, Pages 31 on 06/30/2010