National Park FoundationPark Steward

Eileen Quinn

Park StewardMission

• The National Park Foundation was established to do the following:

• Strengthen the connection between the American people and their National Parks by raising private funds

• Making strategic grants• Creating innovative

partnerships• Increasing public awareness.

Photo Taken from www.nationalparks.org

Park StewardValues

• Protecting fragile ecosystems and wildlife habitats through conservation programs

• Securing tens of thousands of acres of parkland for new parks and existing parks

• Supporting trail restoration across the country with programs like Active Trails.

• Founding the national Parks as Classrooms program and supporting other youth programs like America’s Best Idea Grants, Electronic Field Trip, First Bloom, Junior Rangers, Park Climate Challenge, and WebRangers.

• Preserving our African American History in the national parks• Leading the fundraising effort for the Flight 93 Memorial• Creating unique opportunities for teachers and education professionals to

use the parks as teaching tools with programs like Park Teachers and Park Stewards.

• Uniting public and private interests in support of our national parks• Restoring the Washington Monument• Creating national volunteer and service to the land programs

Stewards Make a Difference

Volunteer Stewards are individuals and organizations committed to developing a world-class network of parks and protected areas. They assist with the site

management and operation of a number of protected areas throughout the province. Over 270

individual stewards and nearly 60 steward organizations are currently involved in the program.

What It Means to be a Volunteer Steward

• Encourage public participation in site management and operations;

• Enhance public understanding of, and commitment to, conservation and protected areas programs; and

• Foster communication between the public, local government, and Parks and Recreation.

Photo Taken from www.nationalparks.org

Steward Duties• Stewards help us monitor conditions at select parks and protected areas.• Stewards have no enforcement responsibility.• Although they do not represent the government legally, their

observations alert us to the unique management needs of the sites they care for.

• There are two types of stewards: Roving Stewards and Stewards Assigned to Site.

• Stewards plan to think ahead.• To problem solve; to explain; to plan are another aspect of the Steward.• To be actively engaged.• Stewards have to gather relevant data.• Stewards must be able to evaluate thinking and learning.• Stewards must be able to offer a solution.

Park Stewards ResponsibilitiesStewards of the Land

Roving Steward• Not assigned to specific site• Free to move from site to site to

monitor, take photos, or install a sign• Free to take on special short/long

term projects• Use specialized skills and interests to

assist other stewards or staff to under take special projects.

Steward assigned to site• Required to visit their assigned site(s)

at least twice per year• Observe, record, and report on

natural conditions and human activities, including destruction or alteration, and unauthorized activities;

• Install and maintain signs along the site boundary,

• Complete and submit site-inspection forms, which the department uses to update its site database.

Most of the county’s trails and terrain are included within four kinds of parks and preserves: county parks, state parks, the U.S. Forest Service (Cleveland National Forest) and the Irvine Company.

Inputs• Volunteers to maintain the lands

natural resources• Volunteers to maintain and install

signs around the boundary• Public education and promotion of

the National Park• Biophysical inventories and other

research projects• Making minor fence repairs• Providing input into site

management plans• Conducting fund raising activates • Developing interpretative trails

and signs

• Conducting breeding surveys• Installing bird houses• Mapping special features and rare

species• Developing comprehensive

lists(plants, birds, animals, etc.)• Organize annual site clean-up• Planning and developing site

improvements(parking lots, trails, ect.)

• Planning and leading educational programs

• Designing interpretative brochures

ProcessWhat are the specific needs to operate the national

park and stay open for all to enjoy?

•Site clean ups•Reclamation projects•Install and maintenance of signs along the protected boundary•Trail development and parking areas•Public education and promotion•Biophysical inventories and other research projects•Fundraising•Volunteers

Photo Taken from www.nationalparks.org

Process• One of the Stewards Programs is an Electronic Field Trip. This is a

way to generate excitement and volunteers from the students and instill in them an awareness of the National Parks’ historical relevance and a passion to support this national treasure.

• The program provides high school educators with immersive training throughout the summer in a national park, during which they familiarize themselves with their local national park, learning about the park’s mission, resources, and roles and responsibilities of the park staff. The teachers then work with their park partners to develop service-learning projects and design educational tools of relevance to the national parks to be implemented in the upcoming school year. The projects serve to address the needs of the parks, while at the same time meeting local, state, and national education standards.

OutputsExamples of projects completed by stewards include:•The parks are maintained and cleaned for all visitors•Innovative Technological Electronic Field Trips to generate public interest and awareness•Boundaries are maintained for safety of visitors and the parks’ indigenous natural environment•Trail development and parking areas •Public education and promotion •Protect and maintain natural ecosystems•Brochures to promote fundraising •Brochures that announce public events to provoke interest

Outcomes• Planning and leading educational programs• Developing interpretative trails and signs• Designing brochures• The Steward has explicated the maintenance to students. The Steward is

allotted the land and protects it by preserving the natural environment for all plant and animal life.

• The benefit is in the qualitative research showing the land is prosperous and thriving dew to the valuable work of the Steward.

• The public is more interested in visiting a well maintained park with well developed trails.

• The community is enhanced by having vocational training in the National Park so they can be more involved in our National Parks.

• Is there a richer appreciation of Nature and history because of this experience?

Model

Model

Appeal to Shuttelworth Foundation

• Innovative and new ideas through technology

• To make the world a better place through change

• Support brilliant individuals not past successes

• A community working together will support each other and make a social change.

National Park Foundation• Electronic Field trips• Preserving our natural

resourcesStewards’ Impacts are:• Maintaining the land for the

future• Thriving ecosystems • Preservation of natural

resources • Volunteers working for a better

tomorrow

Personal ConnectionPhilosophy

• The more we expose the thinking, working and practices of our organization and our projects, the better. Exposing this information allows other organizations, project implementers, funders, policy makers, change agents, advocates and academics to learn from what we have done, critically assess, give feedback, and engage with us on the issues and open the door to collaborations.

• Openly licensing allows others to replicate, reuse, adapt, improve, adopt, bring to scale, write about, talk about, remix, translate, digitize, redistribute and build upon what we have done.Photo Taken from www.nationalparks.org

Personal ConnectionPhilosophy

• We support individuals through fellowships (rather than project funding) because we believe that great people are the true change agents. They are the champions who believe in the change they want to see in the world. They are the ones who have spent time and effort getting to know the landscape and the network within it, who are invested personally and professionally in the ecosystem. They have the vision, the drive, the passion and the motivation to see the plan through, and they will continue to do so after the fellowship ends. It is an investment in the individual and their vision for their contribution to positive change in the world.

• We actively collaborate with others and encourage the same in our fellowships. We believe collaboration strengthens any initiative by sharing ideas and resources, challenging each other to do better and be better and bringing fresh thinking to the table. We do not want to reinvent the wheel and would not want others to do so either. We do not want to compete for resources or the attention of policy makers or beneficiaries. Working together is faster and smarter than working against each other.

• We focus on innovation. We believe the implementation of proven ideas is important, but there is a great deal of support for these kinds of initiatives already. We want to give the person with the fresh idea a chance to try it and see if it brings about the positive change they believe it will. Conventional thinking takes a great deal of time and effort to shift and often radical alternatives are needed to bring about change.

• We make use of conventional as well as social media to drive messages into a public forum and seed discussions, real time. We believe this helps to propagate ideas and invite interaction and engagement from a broad range of interested individuals and institutions.

Community Need• The community need is to have a place to go and “get back to nature”.• It is important to know what the past represents and how it will affect

the future. This land that we have for our National Parks is a treasure that everyone can learn from.

• I would take my family to the National Park because I want them to understand that we are here for a short time and as a society, maintaining the Earth is our responsibility.

• Together the National Park Service and all Americans Make sure that they are preserved for generations who will follow.

• Preservation and the future matter to all in the community because this is your land; we are responsible for the landscapes. Ecosystems, and historical sites—all protected in America’s nearly 400 National Parks.

Get Involved• Become a Volunteer! Do something that will make a difference tomorrow

THINK CRITICALLY and ACT CRITICALLY!!!• Join in a hike or plan a family trip. Get back to nature. Take a moment to

notice the beauty that surrounds you. How very precious and fragile the world around us is. We are all “Stewards”. We have a responsibility to take care of the world and keep it healthy for the next generation and the next generation and so on.

• Search a couple of our local National Parks and see what they have to offer.

• Mark Shields, National Park Foundation(202)354-6480, mshields@nationalparks.org

• Do something to get yourself involved. Do something to develop students abilities to construct ideas into thinking.

• Be apart of something great - The National Park Foundation.