Jess Bryzek served with Trout Unlimited in 2018-2019, working to make streams healthier to support native brook trout populations.
Community Development
Part of my scope of service as an AmeriCorps member serving the Foundation is to aid in the expansion and outreach within our serviced communities. With a small staff and a large rural region to cover, maintaining personal connections with individual communities remains challenging—something that technology alone cannot fully address. The major project I recently completed consisted of eight nonprofit information sessions designed not only as a 101 course to community foundations and applying for grants, but as regenerative networking opportunities for volunteers and staff in the nonprofit sector who often experience isolation and burnout.
Conservation
Each year between December 14 and January 5, naturalists and bird lovers across the western hemisphere mobilize in the longest-running community science project in the world. Volunteers go out on one day to count birds in the Audubon Christmas Bird Count (CBC). The data collected by thousands of volunteers has been used as a valuable resource to understand trends in bird populations over the past century. On December 14, we ventured out for a Christmas Bird Count in Pocahontas County.
On Saturday, December 7th, I helped organize and uphold a unique and ancient English caroling tradition in Elkins, where we recreated this ancient English tradition at the Kump House in order to bless their apple trees, chasing out harmful spirits and waking the trees up for the coming winter so that they will have a bountiful harvest next fall. While this sounds strange, the event itself is more about bringing the wider Elkins community together in an evening of song and creating a fun tradition that will hopefully become a yearly event!
Conservation, Heritage, Community Development
In our 2023-24 member service year, we supported 34 AmeriCorps members at 20 organizations whose sites, programs, and activities were visited by 39,860 individuals. These members delivered educational programs to an audience of over 5,000 individuals, treated and improved 1,052 acres of public land, and managed 1,501 hours of volunteer service. 1,184 individuals who participated in our stewardship education programs reported increased knowledge of environmental stewardship.
Heritage
Madeline Ricks is an AmeriCorps member with AFNHA, serving as the Collections Preservation Coordinator for The Augusta Heritage center in Elkins, WV. She has begun writing a new blog series for the Augusta website. Beginning with the African origins of the banjo, Madeline will take readers on a journey through the histories and cultural impacts of the instruments played in West Virginia’s musical traditions.
