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Information For Volunteers

Ohio Earth Team Volunteer Program

Missy Sanders
State Volunteer Coordinator
Findlay Service Center,
7868 CR 140, Suite F
Findlay, Ohio 45840
419-422-5438 (140)

In recognition of the interest and skills many Americans have in conservation, Congress passed legislation – Section 1526 of PL97-98, Food and Agriculture Act – in 1981 permitting the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) to use volunteers. In 1985, the volunteer effort was organized as the Earth Team, primarily due to the Farm Bill and the increased workload of NRCS. The primary purpose of the Earth Team is to expand NRCS services by using volunteer time, talent and energy to help accomplish the NRCS mission. Since 1982 approximately 428,000 Earth Team volunteers have donated more than 13 million hours.

Join the Earth Team!

The Volunteer Voice- The "Voice of the Earth Team"

The Earth Team in Ohio - NEW!

Crestview Recycles is a group of high school students who come together several times a year not only to help their community recycle unwanted items that could clog landfills, but also to raise money to fund education programs in their schools.

For the last 13 years, under the supervision of Earth Team Volunteer (and High School Biology Teacher) Kathy Cattrell, over 100 students from Crestview High School have donated 700 hours PER YEAR to the Crestview Recycles program. They currently are filling two semi trucks every other month with items such as newspapers, aluminum cans and computers. These kids, the District Conservationist for Columbiana County and their advisor stand outside rain or shine, heat or snow to collect these items – only one time in the history of the group was the collection postponed, and that was due to school being closed for heavy snow.

This program started out as a collection source for newsprint to be shredded for bedding at a local dairy. The first year the group collected just enough to fill one or two grain trucks (6-8 tons of paper). Community support has grown such that they currently are filling almost 2 semi trucks (15 to 25 tons) 6 times each year! In the last 13 years they have collected 1,213 tons of paper, 5.25 tons of aluminum cans and over 500 computers.

As if recycling these items isn’t enough to help their community, the students take the money earned from the recycled items and fund 2 Crestview High School Envirothon Teams, various field trips to study the natural environment, and specialized electronic equipment for use in the classroom such as a projection microscope and camera, laptop computers with specialized science programs, and other projection equipment that allows better teaching of science. The proceeds also allow for the purchase of taxidermy mounts, and to support the feeding and care of a collection of live snakes native to Ohio. Selected students are recruited as individual Earth Team Volunteers to take the snake collection and mounted animals to Columbiana SWCD and NRCS sponsored field days for educational programs. Other programs are given in the elementary schools and sometimes to Ruritan groups or Lions Clubs.

Along with the recycling program and the education programs, these students also do macro-invertebrate monitoring in the Little Beaver Creek Wild and Scenic River Watershed and report their findings to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources Division of Natural Areas and Preserves for inclusion in the Annual Report on the State of the Watershed.

With this group program, not only does the community and environment benefit from recycling, the students benefit from the purchase of science equipment and education programs, and the SWCD and NRCS benefit from the massive outreach opportunity. The SWCD has been fortunate enough to hire at least two former group members as summer interns.

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