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Welcome to Travis, our summer intern. He will be working with the local A Rocha team to conduct a habitat survey and begin planning our first conservation project in our local foothills. We are excited to begin the conservation phase of our work - a big thanks to Santa Barbara Community Church for allowing us to use a portion of their site for this purpose. Watch for photos of the work on our Flickr site.
A Rocha and NieuCommunities invite churches and community organizations to a weekend of hands-on workshops about caring for creation.
The Chiltern Gateway Project celebrated its 25th anniversary in Lewknor, UK. A Rocha UK works together with Natural England and the Chiltern Conservation Board to care for and share local natural treasures with the community as well as visitors.
We have been staying on the site of A Rocha Canada in Surrey, B.C. It has been great to see a solid conservation center in action. The center is ten acres and holds a small farm, including a few cows, chickens, and a vegetable garden that helps feed the staff that lives and/or eats on site. A wide variety of expertise comprises the staff - scientists conducting research, educators, administrative staff, community outreach coordinator, volunteers, a cook, graphic designer, media specialist, gardeners (small time farming really) and a few fundraising staff. All is all there is about 20+ staff and additional volunteers make up the team.
It has been encouraging to see how well developed their projects have become and how well this crew works together.
The national director oversees all activities and makes sure that each one of the areas listed below are working in concert in addition to raising funds and working on organizational growth. A site manager, a husband and wife team, live on site and ensure that the facility and the staff that live on-site are functioning in concert and living in a thoughtful and intentional community. An educational coordinator and his staff ensure that visiting school groups, summer camps, and other educational outreach opportunities are meeting needs and functioning to their potential. A community outreach coordinator promotes the organization in the surrounding area and works with the education coordinator and volunteer coordinator to promote community involvement. The volunteer coordinator recruits help for the on site garden/farm, tours of the site’s wetlands, data collection for the staff scientists, and educational outreach. All in all it is amazing how much activity runs through this site each day and how much contact they have with the greater community while still having a core of staff living in intentional community.
This is a great model for us.
The last few posts have been links to articles that I’ve dugg (digg.com) and are meant to help better define A Rocha’s global work. One of the most frequently asked questions I get is “What does A Rocha do?” I thought the best way to pass along some articles from time to time to better illustrate and explain the global impact of A Rocha.
An area of the Algarve protected by environmental laws has been destroyed by developers according to environmental groups who are now leading court action and calls for the land to be restored to its former state. A Rocha Portugal is working to help this situation.
The Association for the Protection of Jabal Moussa is seeking official protection for 10 million square meters of land at a time when Lebanon is still recovering from devastating forest fires and environmental damage that plagued the country last year.
Story of how A Rocha Kenya’s conservation work changed a life.
