A Year of Growth - Deepening Connections with Our Community

By Anna Young, PhD, Director of Education

What a tremendous year of growth for our Education Department, including the addition of almost a completely new team, reinstating some past programs, and introducing new programs! We have a new Director, new Curators in both Education and Volunteer Programs, the addition of three new Education Coordinators, a Volunteer Support Staff member, had two summer interns, over 100 new adult volunteers, and 20 new ZooTeens! This brings us to 12 education staff, more than 400 volunteers and more than 45 ZooTeens.

We held our annual Volunteer Appreciation Dinner this May for the first time in three years. We recognized service milestones, including five people who have been volunteering for 30 years (Jan Demarbiex, Daphne DeMartino, Lee Miller, Nancy Scott, and Tobe Strother)! We named two Volunteers of the Year (Mike Harris and Marilyn Forrest). We also created and awarded for the first time, a Rookie of the Year (Bernie Hale), for a volunteer who hit the ground running and impactfully contributed to The Living Desert in their first year of service. We’re incredibly proud and thankful for the dedication of our volunteers.

We’ve been updating our Discovery Center display monthly to pair with different animal appreciation days; our World Migratory Bird Day display in May was one of the most popular displays yet! This was great timing, as this summer The Living Desert officially became an AZA SAFE North American Songbird partner.

Volunteer Programs is reviving interpretive cart stations across zoo grounds, so that volunteers can easily access biofacts and other interpretive elements near the habitats and gardens whose stories they

highlight. Over the upcoming season we will be growing our interpretive presence, in alignment with a new Interpretive Plan to message our key priorities: protect deserts, choose sustainable, and advocate for others to do the same.

Education Programs restarted school field trips, welcomed back ZooCamp, and in collaboration with the Conservation team, we’ve brought back the Wildlife on Wheels (WOWs) program. Thanks to the generous donation of Connie and Bob Lurie, we were able to host two weeks of ZooCamp at The Living Desert for the Boys & Girls Clubs of Coachella Valley, and four WOWs at their Indio, Coachella, Mecca, and La Quinta sites.

During ZooCamp, campers from ages 5 to 12 learned about a variety of STEAM topics in our themed sessions, such as Sensing the Desert, Zoo Designers, and Junior Field Conservationist. At WOWs, participants learned about our Time to Talk Trash campaign, and how by covering their trash at home they can help support the desert tortoise.

The Living Desert renovated classroom space in lower McManus, below the reptile house, giving us the ability to host another track of ZooCamp in a muchneeded air-conditioned space!

As we plan for the future, the Education team is reimagining our role within The Living Desert and how our programs can contribute to desert conservation efforts. This upcoming year, we’ll be introducing more family programming and rolling out adult programs, so people of all ages can have a wonderfully wild time while learning how we all can make a difference in our world.