San Angelo Life Skills Class Honored for their Efforts as Earth Team Volunteers

By Donnie Lunsford, Public Affairs Specialist, USDA-NRCS

Every year, the USDA amasses countless volunteer hours worth millions of dollars in donated time towards conservation across the nation through the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) Earth Team Volunteer program. Over the past two years, San Angelo, Texas’ Central High School Special Education Department’s Life Skills Class has assembled educational bags for conventions, school events, workshops, and Earth Day events as Earth Team Volunteers. This year, NRCS in Texas presented a plaque to the Life Skills Class to honor the hard work and dedication of the students to the Earth Team as a part of National Volunteer week.

“This partnership is a win-win for NRCS and the Life Skills Class student volunteers and it helps with the NRCS mission of Helping People Help the Land,” said Elisha Kuehn, assistant conservationist for field operations in San Angelo. “This effort could not have been done without the dedication of their teacher, Valerie Jones, and teacher’s aide, Christy Julius, who have worked with these students to assemble this educational material for a lot of our outreach events.”

The Life Skills Class focuses on teaching the students to communicate either verbally or through sign or gesture. The students begin the class in the 10th grade and stay in this classroom until they are 22 years old. During this time, the students’ academic requirements are met and transitioning into adult life becomes the focus, allowing them to develop skills to function in a sheltered work setting.

Three years ago, San Angelo’s Vocational Adjustment Coordinator at that time, Becca Flores, reached out to the NRCS to inquire if there were any activities or tasks the students in Jones’s class could do to help build life skills through the NRCS’s Earth Team Volunteer Program.

“We have really enjoyed working with the NRCS by putting together the educational bags. Each student learns real world experience and it means more to the students when they have a real task that they know goes out to the public,” said Jones. “Each student has a task that they work on to complete the entire project, which helps develop fine motor skills, planning, and following processes with specific instructions.”

Since the students began their volunteer efforts, there have been nine volunteers with approximately 288 hours. They have filled countless bags, which allows NRCS staff to focus efforts on conservation planning, while forging skills in these young volunteers.

“The Life Skills Class and their teachers have been a great asset to our agency and the Earth Team Program,” said Cheryl Parrish, earth team volunteer coordinator and office assistant. “I enjoy picking up and dropping off supplies because you can see that they really enjoy the tasks that they are given.”

Earth Team is a program that partners volunteers with NRCS employees. It was created in 1985 and offers many opportunities to individuals 14 and older who are interested in volunteering to improve the nation’s natural resources. Earth Team volunteers help NRCS conservationists provide private landowners and others a range of services from conservation technical assistance to teaching and generating awareness about conservation through community projects.

Contact your local NRCS office to volunteer or visit our website, Earth Team Volunteer Program for additional information.