The Nature Center provides many different outdoor opportunities to suit your volunteer interests or needs.
Guiding elementary school field trips, sharing your love of gardening with students, adopting a trail with your family, and land stewardship tasks are just a few of the opportunities we have to choose from. We do our best to provide service activities that are meaningful and interesting to the volunteer.
Download and print a Volunteer Application now!
Now in our 14th year, the Children’s Hands-On Gardening Program continues to serve Alliance-area third and fourth grade students. The students visit the Nature Center four times during one growing season to learn about gardening and get hands-on experience. Third grade students come in March and May and return as fourth-graders in September and November. Students visit from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and cycle through activity stations in small groups that reflect the season and theme of their visit. The themes are Germination/Plant Life Cycle, Plant Parts and Functions, and Pollination in the spring. The fall includes Seeds to Salsa Harvest, followed by Soil/Nutrient Cycling. With this basic knowledge and hands-on experience of an entire growing season in Ohio, we hope these students are inspired and confident to plant in pots or gardens at their homes for years to come. Volunteers are needed to help facilitate the activity stations on a variety of dates in both seasons.
For a very rewarding experience, please consider becoming a Volunteer Trail Guide for preschool and elementary school field trips. Many local schools bring their students to the Nature Center for seasonal or themed hikes to experience and learn about the wonderful outdoors. Most field trips occur during weekday mornings for 1 ½ hours during spring and fall months. We encourage potential Volunteer Trail Guides to observe a minimum of two groups led by Nature Center staff or seasoned Volunteer Trail Guides to be sure it is a good fit for you.
Individuals and families can volunteer to adopt a trail at the Nature Center. You would be responsible for walking your trail a minimum of once a month to check on its condition and provide reasonable maintenance. Maintenance may include removing fallen limbs from the trail, trimming back overgrowth, litter control, and reporting any downed trees that need removed from your trail. Adopting a trail is a great opportunity to introduce your children to the importance of land stewardship.
Trail maintenance, gardening, clearing the wheelchair-accessible boardwalk of debris, cleaning and filling bird feeders, and invasive plants control are just a few examples where one or two hours on these projects make a HUGE difference! We do our best to accommodate our volunteers, taking into consideration their times of availability and preferences of tasks.