It has been a very exciting spring for the Institute, especially the growth and development of one of our key partnership initiatives, Pennsylvania Master Naturalist. The PA Master Naturalist program promotes awareness, understanding, and stewardship of the natural environment by developing a local corps of well-informed citizens dedicated to the conservation of natural resources in their neighborhoods. The program emphasizes a local approach to conservation by forging vital partnerships among community members and local organizations through ongoing natural history education and service activities. This year-round experience consists of three components: intensive natural history training, continuing education and service hours.
As many of our readers know, we piloted this statewide initiative in Philadelphia in 2010 with a focus on urban ecology and the Northern Piedmont and Middle Atlantic Coastal Plain ecoregions. Seventeen trainees from this first class fulfilled their requirements to be Pennsylvania Master Naturalist Volunteers. Program Partners honored the hard work and commitment of these first PMN Volunteers with a graduation ceremony and celebration hosted by Fairmount Water Works Interpretive Center in Philadelphia.
These seventeen dedicated individuals contributed 600 hours of local conservation service to program partners and engaged in 175 hours of ongoing natural history education.
That is what Pennsylvania Master Naturalist status represents — a personal commitment to ongoing natural history education and local conservation action. We applaud you and look forward to learning of what you accomplish in 2012!
That same evening we also celebrated the incoming class of 2011 having completed the 55-hour natural history core training course. Since then we have received their service project proposals and are excited with the work they will be doing with our conservation partners in Philadelphia.
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PMN Class of 2010 -- Certified Pennsylvania Master Naturalist Volunteers
PMN Class of 2011 -- Pennsylvania Master Naturalist Trainees
Learn more about the Pennsylvania Master Naturalist partnership program.
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