Earth Day Bay Day Extravaganza!

Earth Day Bay Day youth

This past Saturday, April 8th, 2017, the Coastal Bend Bays Foundation hosted their annual Earth Day Bay Day celebration. The reason for Earth Day Bay Day is to promote awareness, appreciation and stewardship for our coastal natural resources. It’s accomplished is by gathering like minded individuals and organizations at Heritage Park to show their support and spread their message of conservation. Some of these organizations are the Coastal Bend Bays and Estuaries Program, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, Master Naturalists, the Audubon Society, Glady’s Porter Zoo, birding sanctuaries and Youth Odyssey, to name a few.

For those who aren’t fully aware of what all Youth Odyssey does, it may seem like an odd combination to have us at an event like Earth Day Bay Day. Admittedly, we are usually in attendance to promote our upcoming summer camps and to share our mission with the community, but a large part of what we do with the youth (camping trips, ropes courses, and on-site programs), is to establish good stewardship practices for the environment. As an organization, we do a lot of outdoor activities and, because of this, we promote and teach Leave-No-Trace principles. All Leave-No-Trace principles are focused on allowing us to enjoy the natural world while lowering our environmental footprint. These are especially taught during our week long and weekend camping trips at State and National Parks. On our camping trips we are able to better show the purpose of these principles by instructing them to pick up any trash they may come across on the trails so the animals don’t think of them as food and to maintain the beauty of the environment. We also want them to stay on the trail and not deviate, one reason is for safety purposes, the other is to not effect the natural landscape. Initially, we begin to establish these practices during our two-hour on-site teambuilding sessions, where we instruct and encourage our youth participants to clean up after themselves and not litter in order to reduce their impact.

We use our programming to create great life practices for getting jobs, going to school, and also to create stewards of the environment; so they enjoy it and share it with others while keeping their impact small. It really all comes down to respect; respect for themselves, each other, and the environment. We also teach the youth about the environments we visit; how the landscape was made, what animals and plants live in the area, what they typically eat and how they survive in these climates. Only through knowledge and understanding of the environment can one really appreciate it and create a bond with it. That is why we are linked with Earth Day Bay Day every year. Though it may not be obvious, we all share a common bond to create and educate others on how to maintain the natural world for future generations.

Earth Day Bay Day rockwall
Earth Day Bay Day climbing

During Earth Day Bay Day, we utilize a portable rock wall as our medium to attract and peak others interest in our organization. This is relevant because we use our ropes course as a growth step for every one of our programs. It is at this moment where the participants start to come out of their shells and express their true selves. This year we had a lot of traffic and a lot of brave girls and boys, and even parents in some cases, who attempted to climb the wall. As usual, the rock wall was a hit and it allowed us to speak to parents and guardians about our programming opportunities and our summer camps. We were even able to gain individuals who were interested in becoming volunteers.

We love our partnership with the Coastal Bend Bays Foundations and their continued support for us and Earth Day Bay Day. We intend to continue this pairing for years to come and have even more people understand and support Youth Odyssey through our community outreach.