Greetings Youth Corps Friends and Family!
It’s been a while since we updated you on the goings-on of our program, but we’ve been toiling away at studying for our HiSet Exams and working on a few projects: Urban Gateway, Warren County properties, and plantings with the NJ Audubon. The time just keeps going by faster and faster. Soon, we’ll be starting a new cohort and the process begins anew.
““Merrill Creek is thrilled to serve as a living laboratory for this innovative program. We feel fortunate to partner with Youth Corps of Phillipsburg and NJ Audubon to improve climate and ecological literacy in Corps members at a time when this type of education is so critically important.””
As the warmer weather becomes cooler and days become shorter, our opportunities for outdoor work and classroom time will be less and less - but recently we conducted an exercise outside that was the culmination of time, weather - and patience. It also established a working relationship with the folks at Merrill Creek Reservoir - we’re really excited about that.
Months ago, I was having a conversation with our friend John Parke from NJ Audubon about how NJYC of Phillipsburg had greatly benefitted from the partnership formed between us through all the plantings we’d done together. I had mentioned that I would like for our Corpsmembers to have more opportunities for more technical applications relative to restoration work we were doing - specifically engaging our students in activities that scientifically assess the water bodies we were working in and around.
John came through in a big way! He was able to purchase some scientific equipment - data loggers - after securing funding via The Lower Delaware Wild & Scenic Management Council (www.lowerdelawarewildandscenic.org) These funds supported New Jersey Audubon’s Water Quality Monitoring through a NJ Youth Corps of Phillipsburg Partnership with funding from the National Parke Service (CFDA: 15.962 – National Wild and Scenic River System). We deployed the data loggers back in July and this past week we retrieved them, downloaded the data, and then interpreted the numbers. We were pleasantly surprised by what we found. Watch the video for more!
“...our data confirmed the water body was healthy””
The data revealed that the profile of the creek’s temperature and dissolved oxygen levels are suitable habitat for trout production - and that the habitat surrounding the water body was contributing to the overall health of the creek. The day was accentuated by doing some macroinvertebrate sampling - another parameter of assessing water quality. CM’s were able to wade into the stream, look under some rocks and see what kind of critters were in the creek. They were able to see the correlation between healthy waterbodies and healthy organisms. That fact - learning about that symbiotic relationship between the land and the water - was an important takeaway from the exercise. It was a wonderful teachable moment: Not only did it get our Corpsmembers out of the classroom and into the field (Corpsmember Gina: “it was cold, but I liked being out in the creek!”), but it also got them outside of the preconceived framework of their thinking toward how we interact and affect the world around us. It also provided our program partner with actionable data - our data confirmed the water body was healthy! This information could now better inform Merrill Creek personnel as to how they might proceed going forward with restoration work. Most importantly though - it provided environmentally affirming experiences. In the words of Corpsmember Miguel after doing a macroinvertebrate sampling, “Those bugs are cool.”
“NJ Audubon is very grateful to have worked with the NJ Youth Corps of Phillipsburg and the staff at Merrill Creek on this project because not only were the students able to see first-hand how natural vegetative cover helps maintain water quality conditions, but they were also able to get hands-on training and education to be citizen scientists evaluating what it takes to support healthy biological communities!”
Staff & CM’s looking for macroinvertabrates
We are so excited about this project and the promise for future applications that it holds for our Corps. You may have heard lately about a Civilian Climate Corps - and this small project demonstrates the possibilities of what a modern version of a CCC can accomplish. As the youth we work with pursue their education through our program, we see this kind of work as a mutually advantageous relationship - it is service-learning manifested - the learning is in the doing.
As the vision of a Civilian Climate Corps starts to come into focus, we at NJYC of Phillipsburg are uniquely positioned as a Corps that is already doing this kind of work. Working with a community-based approach, being mindful, and involving a broad cross-section of our community is an incredibly powerful way in which we can transform not just the landscapes in which we do this work, but also in changing the hearts and minds of those doing the work. We’re excited about opportunities before us!
Big thanks to John Parke of NJ Audubon and Tanya Sulikowski of Merrill Creek Reservoir for your support and dedication to our Corps!
More next week, until then-
Michael