By Lia Schmidt
On Saturday, Sept. 20, students from the Hanley Sustainability Institute Student Leaders program and the Sustainability Ambassador Program took a field trip to the Fraze Pavilion in Kettering for EcoFest.
As a student director of community engagement for the institute, my main role is to serve as a bridge between HSI’s Student Leader program and the greater Dayton community. A key way to do so is through field trips like this, as they are a great way of forming a stronger connection between UD students and the community.
During EcoFest, the pavilion at the Fraze was set up with tables and booths from a variety of local organizations. Beekeepers were selling local honey and Drive Electric Dayton was offering test drives of electric cars. Animal conservation groups brought live animals, including a massive turtle that wandered around the pavilion. There was even a family-oriented section featuring activities for young children that focused on environmental education, waste sorting and gardening.
Another UD student group, the River Stewards, also attended EcoFest. They were volunteering at a booth for a waste-sorting activity and used a mobile waste-sorting wagon to collect waste around the pavilion.
EcoFest is dedicated to minimizing waste, so there were limited, centralized spaces for attendees to dispose of their waste. This means the River Stewards were not only teaching attendees about how to sort their trash, recycling and compost, but they were also helping to support the event’s mission to reduce waste!
We spent some time relaxing in the shade, eating lunch and drinking lemonade from the local food trucks. To explore more local shopping opportunities, we also stopped at Dorothy Lane Market on the way back. This event was such a fun experience because we got to enjoy the weather, get out and engage with our community, and talk to so many people who were also passionate about sustainability and the environment.
We are hoping that these field trips will be an opportunity for students to connect not only with the Dayton community but also with like-minded peers on campus. On this field trip in particular, it was really nice to connect Student Leaders with Sustainability Ambassadors who had never met before.
The Sustainability Ambassador program is a group for students on campus who want to get involved in sustainability through volunteer work, educating peers about new initiatives and engaging with the community. Having both Student Leaders and “SAPlings” on this field trip allowed them to learn more about sustainability in the community while forming a connection between two sustainability-focused groups that have had minimal overlap in the past.
In the upcoming months, we are planning to host more field trips and community volunteer opportunities through HSI. We want to provide students with the opportunity to get out and explore Dayton, even if they might not know where to start.