Adopt-A-Park 2021 Report

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Volunteer Services

Five Rivers MetroParks

 

Summary

Each year, Five Rivers MetroParks invites the community to join us in our parks for our annual Adopt-A-Park service event. Adopt-A-Park participants support our staff by assisting with a variety of tasks from garden bed maintenance and tree plantings to invasive species removal, litter pick-up, and more. In 2020, Adopt-A-Park was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Volunteer Services used this time to plan a safe alternative service event for 2021.

This year's event offered two safe ways for volunteers to support our parks: an in-person project opportunity for our current long-term volunteers and a service kit option inviting the public to join the Restore Our Earth: Mask Up, Clean Up Challenge. The in-person projects were held on Saturday, April 17th from 9 am-11 am and 1 pm-3 pm with 16 projects and a maximum participation of 9 at each project.

The service kit option gave participants the flexibility to pick up litter in our parks, on our trails, and in their favorite local greenspaces throughout April. The public could register for the service kit online and pick it up at scheduled drive-thru distributions on April 8th and 17th at Cox Arboretum and Wegerzyn Gardens MetroParks, or April 24th at the 2nd Street Market. The service kit contained everything needed to safely pick up litter in our parks or out in the community including gloves, trash and recycle bags, 1 litter pick-up tool, educational pamphlets, a seed tag with sponsor information, and step-by-step instructions including a list of locations in need of litter clean-up. Participants were then sent a survey to report where they picked up litter and how much was collected. Additionally, we provided a video overview of the service kit option, several social media posts, and an improved website to support this new service project.

Service Outcomes

74 Volunteers participated in our in-person service projects assisting staff with a variety of tasks to make a difference in our parks:

• 475 lbs of trash collected
• 31 lbs of recycling collected
• 5.5 miles of trail was cleared
• 3.5 acres of invasive species removed
• 130 native trees planted
• 85 native shrubs planted
• 1 nature play area maintained

All 250 service kits available were distributed with 363 people reporting participation in safe litter collection throughout the Miami Valley area during April. Worth noting, of those who participated, 155 were children.

• 8,782 lbs of trash collected
• 4,774 lbs of recycling collected

 

Participants reported litter pick-up at 40 locations throughout the Miami Valley:

• Eastwood MetroPark- 13
• Great Miami River / Recreation Trail- 10
• Neighborhood- 7
• Triangle Park- 7
• Mad River Trail- 5
• Twin Creek- 5
• Cox Arboretum MetroPark- 4
• Island MetroPark- 4
• Possum Creek MetroPark- 4
• Vietnam Veterans Memorial Park- 4
• Englewood MetroPark- 3
• RiverScape MetroPark- 2
• Deweese Park- 2
• Hills and Dales MetroPark- 2
• Sugarcreek MetroPark- 2
• Wegerzyn Gardens MetroPark- 2
• Wolf Creek & Recreation Trail- 2
• Art Van Atta Park- 1
• Belmont Park- 1
• Dayton-Kettering connector trail- 1
• Deweese and Sienna Apartments area- 1
• Fox Run Park- 1
• Garland Road- 1
• Highland Park- 1
• Holes Creek Park- 1
• Ironhorse Trail- 1
• Jane Newcom Park- 1
• Main St. in Moraine- 1
• Miami & Erie Canal Park- 1
• Oak Creek South Park- 1
• Parkview United Methodist Church- Sunflower park- 1
• Patricia Allyn Park- 1
• Patterson Rd by the river- 1
• Route 725- 1
• Shiloh Drive at Markey road- 1
• Shoup Mill conservation area- 1
• Southdale park- 1
• Sycamore Park- 1
• Wesleyan MetroPark- 1
• Wilmington High School- 1

Service Feedback

Staff noted the following from in-person service projects:

• Our parks will benefit in the long-term by adding native shrubs to compete with invasive honeysuckle. 
• 130 native trees were planted that will help create a more diverse forest and ultimately, better community health.
• Invasive species were removed to create space for a pollinator garden with diverse native plants grown in the Barbara Cox Center for Sustainable Horticulture. The plants in this garden will be used to teach the public the importance of invasive plant removal and how native plants can benefit wildlife and pollinators.

Survey responses indicate the following regarding the Restore Our Earth: Mask Up, Clean Up Challenge service kit:

• 93% of respondents rated the kit registration as easy or very easy. 
• 99% of respondents rated the pickup as either very organized or organized.
• 100% of respondents rated the instructional materials as helpful or very helpful.
• 97% of respondents indicated that the service kit provided everything that they needed for collection.
• 85% of respondents felt that they made a very good or excellent impact with this service opportunity.
• 97% of respondents rated the service opportunity as very good or excellent.
• 89% of respondents indicated that they would participate in another service opportunity like this.

Survey respondents also submitted the following comments:

• Very visible area to a lot of travelers, it now looks like an area I want to be associated with.
• That section is always very trashy. It looks great now. We had one person shout thank you from his car, and one give a little honk thanking us. That thanks was an added bonus.
• We like to go kayaking and this is where we put in our kayaks. It's nice to see the area cleaned up for us to enjoy.
• People like being in clean places and feel safer there.
• We love doing this project every year, and we know just how much it means to people and their pets who walk the river trail as well as the wildlife in the area (ducks, geese, etc.). We feel great!
• The park looked better when we were done.
• We collected a lot of trash on the shore of Wolf Creek that others probably would not have gotten since it was a bit off the trail.
• Even though we only collected a small amount, good experience for our kids and also other people at the park could see what we were doing and hopefully be aware of trash in the parks.
• We and our children felt great about getting out there and help our community.
• Wonderful opportunity to give back and model stewardship behavior to my daughter.
• My partner and i do at least one cleanup a week and it always makes us feel good to see an area afterwards. We really like to hit areas along bodies of water.
• Students who picked up trash were excited about their 15-minute EarthDay CleanUp. Others accompanied the clean-up crew, walking but not participating - so at least they were outside and supportive
• The kids enjoyed it and felt they made a difference in where the live and play.
• Very rewarding!

Lessons Learned

One of the great takeaways from this year's alternative Adopt-A-Park service event was how receptive both the public and our long-term volunteers were to the service kit concept. Several of our long-term volunteers opted to utilize the service kit instead of signing up for an in-person project. Participants commented on how nice it was to be able to utilize the litter pick-up tools at their favorite park or along their favorite trail and on their schedule.

If we offer a service kit option in the future, we would like to better target and communicate litter pick-up and disposal locations. Some respondents commented that they were frustrated with the lack of trash: "Eastwood park was amazingly clean and litter-free."

We also experienced a high demand for the service kit and lower demand from our internal long-term volunteers for in-person projects. Having surveyed our volunteers earlier in the year, we knew that some were uncomfortable with a return to service during the pandemic. We expected about 100 long-term volunteers and were short of that expectation by about 25. This did lead to canceling or combining some in-person projects with very short notice to staff. This caused some issues with staff scheduling. In the future, we will do our best to make any changes that impact staff scheduling as early as possible.

Additionally, we learned that we need to add some additional information to our staff project request form. Staff reported that some volunteers at an in-person project were not prepared for the walking distance to the project location or the uneven terrain at that location. In the future, we will build into the form sections for staff to include notes pertinent to physical demands and work environment. This will allow us to communicate any important site-specific details in the project description available to volunteers to review when they sign up.

This years' service event was altered by the global COVID-19 pandemic. We expect higher participation in future years; however, the amount of interest in a more flexible service option like the service kit will be something we continue to explore. Overall, this was a very successful event thanks to the generous support of our staff, community partners, volunteers and our sponsors: Montgomery County Environmental Services and Keep Montgomery County Beautiful, LexisNexis, and QEI Engineers, Inc.