Phil Mulligan, Don Naimoli, National Park Service Director Jonathan B. Jarvis, Valley Forge Volunteer Program Manager Ernestine White.
Congratulations and thanks to our outstanding park volunteers, partners, and staff for winning the national George and Helen Hartzog Award for Outstanding Volunteer Program in the National Park System.
This annual award was initiated nine years ago to recognize the time, talent, innovation, and hard work contributed to national parks through the Volunteers-in-Parks (VIP) program. At Valley Forge NHP alone, over 2,900 volunteers contributed more than 53,000 hours last year.
Valley Forge considers our second exceptional accomplishment to be the implementation, which we have been building toward since 2004, of a continuum of hands-on volunteer opportunities that now reaches all ages, diverse communities, and interests. Working toward this over the last several years, we initiated or redesigned programs to achieve a broader reach into the community, made much greater use of community service programs, and initiated several well received new opportunities.
· We established robust new volunteer programs for young people. Youth volunteers assisting with natural resource-related projects increased 61% over the previous year. There was a 30% increase in youth assisting with education and living history programs; and a 25% increase in youth assisting with maintenance and cultural resources related projects.
· We made strategic investments of park funds and staff time in youth development programs including the Youth-in-Parks program (1692 hours of service), Student Conservation Association National High School Crew (1,088 hours of service), the Student Conservation Association Philadelphia Community Crew (2,880 hours of service from inner-city kids), and AmeriCorps NCCC (1,869 hours of service from a diverse crew).
We believe we can continue to grow confidently, focused on the park mission and on providing great opportunities for volunteers.
Learn more about the Volunteer Program at Valley Forge and how you can get started volunteering in your National Park!