Be the Change

Volunteers at the Cape Girardeau Nature Center maintaining the center's flowers.

JEGANAATH GIRI

Volunteer at the Cape Girardeau Conservation Nature Center

At the Cape Girardeau Conservation Nature Center, volunteer ambassador Felicia Fox is a jack of all trades. She greets visitors, answers questions about exhibits and does the “nitty gritty” work of preparing materials for the naturalists’ Saturday programs. She has even sewn curtains for the center.

On one particular Friday morning, Fox, who has been volunteering at the Nature Center for four and a half years, feeds the birds.

“I love it,” she says. “I would highly recommend it to anyone who wants to work with the young ones or the adults in our community. … I wish I would have started sooner.”

The position requires a commitment of 10 hours per month, and the Nature Center teaches the skills volunteers need for the positions, says volunteer coordinator Jamie Koehler.

There are a variety of volunteer positions for people with different skill sets and interests, including working at the front desk answering phones and assisting with sales in the gift shop; working at programs as a greeter, serving refreshments and talking about the animals; teaching workshops based on a skill or knowledge the community would be interested in learning; feeding the animals, cleaning cages and doing live programs with the reptiles and amphibians; and maintaining the trails and garden beds.

Those who enjoy being around like-minded “nature geeks” will enjoy volunteering in the environment, Koehler says.

Cape Girardeau Conservation Nature Center Volunteer, Felicia Fox, feeds the birds at the center.

JEGANAATH GIRI

“This is for anybody who has a passion for nature and the outdoors,” she says. “Anyone who is excited and enthused about nature and wants to share that with everyone.”

Judy Lang teaches craft classes and children’s programs among the diverse tasks she performs as a volunteer at the Nature Center. A volunteer for the past two years, she says she gets many of her ideas for her workshops from Pinterest. In the past, she has taught visitors how to make trivets and wall hangings out of tree limbs and how to make a concrete bird bath. She has also gone into Jefferson Elementary School in Cape Girardeau to lead a program called “What’s in your backyard?”

“[The goal of the program is] trying to bring nature to the kids and making them realize nature’s all around you — you don’t have to go into the woods,” Lang says.

Although she initially didn’t think she would enjoy working with children, the children’s enthusiasm is now one of the aspects Lang enjoys most about volunteering at the nature center. Formerly in retail before she retired, she also enjoys interacting with people.

“It gets you out of your little niche,” she says. “As a retiree, we often get too comfortable, but this has such diversity. You can pick and choose what you want to do. The more you do, the more you’ll want to do.”

Fox says she cannot choose only one favorite experience from her time volunteering at the Nature Center. One of the most enjoyable, however, is seeing children’s eyes “bug open” when they first see the live two-headed snake on display.

Volunteering at the Nature Center is a good experience, she says, for those who enjoy expanding their horizons.

“You can’t go out of there and not have learned something,” Fox says. “I learn something every time I walk out of there.”

Interested in volunteering at the Cape Girardeau Conservation Nature Center? Contact volunteer coordinator Jamie Koehler at (573) 290-5218.