Jane Goodall Inspires Youth at Glen Echo Park

Jane Goodall explains the contributions of African Giant Pouched Rats in detecting hidden explosives, saving the lives of the people working to remove these dangerous landmines and the people living around them.

NPS photo/Kelly Coy

On Sunday March 26, 2017, the Jane Goodall Institute hosted an event at Glen Echo Park, a National Park Service unit outside of Washington, D.C. The event was part of Jane Goodall’s Roots & Shoots program which aims to connect youth of all ages who share a desire to create a better world through service projects and youth-led campaigns. The first part of the event was a fair for the local Washington, DC area Roots & Shoots programs to share the amazing work they are doing. Their projects ranged from a group of elementary school aged children adopting and rehabilitating a local park that had been abandoned to two brothers that developed an after school program that took leftover food from school events and local restaurants to the local homeless.

The National Park Service staff from the Community Stewardship Program host an interactive booth encouraging youth to explore biodiversity.

NPS photo/Elaine Leslie

The Jane Goodall Institute graciously extended an invitation for the National Park Service (NPS) Community Stewardship Program (CSP), a new program within the Biological Resources Division, to participate in the fair. The CSP team developed an interactive booth focused on the exploration of biodiversity. Each child was given a checklist with eight different taxa groups and then they were told to explore the area for all the items on the list. Once they completed the checklist, they were given a “National Park Service Biodiversity Champion” token.

The final part of the event was a speech to all attendees (including approximately 150 children ages 3-12) by Jane Goodall. The kids crowded up to the stage and sat on the floor as Jane spoke about her life, her passions, and her reasons for hope. She offered words of inspiration, explaining that students from around the world were working on projects just like them, and all together they were making a significant impact on the world. She assured them that they could achieve any goal as long as they “work hard, take advantage of opportunity, and never give up”. She ended the program with a special message to the kids saying “You are wonderful, every single one of you and don’t forget it.”

To learn more about the NPS Community Stewardship Program, visit our website here.