Clean it Up! An Earth Service Corps Story
February 3, 2012
Ivonne Garcia, Assoc. Director of Outdoor Programs
Find out what our Earth Service Corps kids are up to around San Francisco...
Earth Service Corps Story
January 16, 2012
On a clear, sunny Martin Luther King Jr. morning, while most kids were sleeping in on their day off, nine Earth Service Corps (ESC) students representing three middle schools gathered at Roosevelt Middle School at 8:30am, ready to embark on a day full of service and exploration.
MLK Jr. Day is also known as a national day of service, and a day that the Golden Gate National Park Conservancy (GGNPC) lines up various service projects for youth, adults and families throughout the Bay Area. ESC decided to do their part in giving back with an Ocean Beach Cleanup Day put on by the GGNPC. After hearing about the do’s and don’ts from the park ranger, the students grabbed their orange buckets, snapped on their work gloves, picked out a garbage picker upper, and in teams of three, headed for the sandy shores. An hour and a half later of Styrofoam pieces and plastic debris pick-up, the students thanked the Park Conservancy and headed into Golden Gate Park for lunch and the second part of the day’s adventure.
With Golden Gate Park’s tulip garden as their backdrop, students had a working lunch as they munched on their sandwiches and talked strategy for their impending hunt for the geocaches. Geocaching is a real-world outdoor treasure hunting game. Players try to locate hidden containers, called geocaches, using GPS-enabled devices and then share their experiences online. Equipped with an iPhone’s GPS system, students took turns locating the hidden containers by leading each other through trails around the park’s 2 historic windmills. Often, they were seen scrambling, climbing and running, until finally turning over a log and yelling out “POPCORN!” a signal they agreed on to mean that one of them had found the geocache. By 3:00pm, ESC left Golden Gate Park with four successful geocache finds. The chatter on the bus ride back to Roosevelt Middle Schools consisted of plans for exploring other nearby parks for more hidden treasures and possibly even creating Earth Service Corps’s own geocache to hide for the general public.
To learn more about Presidio YMCA's Earth Service Corps, click HERE.
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