6/26 Volunteers: Recruit, Manage and Retain

Hear about volunteer recruitment, management and retention from local experts in the field!  This workshop will also include information on volunteer safety, emergency response, accomplishing complex tasks with unskilled volunteers, and properly navigating through documentation required by the City of Seattle.

This workshop will be led by Elizabeth White from EarthCorps, Mark “buphalo” Tomkiewicz from Nature Consortium, and Dawn Blanch from Seattle Dept. of Parks & Recreation.

REGISTER HERE FOR VOLUNTEER TRAINING

Mark Tomkiewicz, aka buphalo, is the Restoration Project Director for Nature Consortium.  He directs the organization’s on-going Urban Forest Restoration Project in the West Duwamish Greenbelt, where volunteers are engaged 3-6 days per week on a year-round basis.  buphalo started working with Nature Consortium as a teaching artist in January 2006 and rapidly transitioned to the forest restoration project.  He earned a degree in Environmental Science from UMASS, Amherst and has taught math, science, art, and English in traditional and alternative settings across the U.S. and abroad.  Previously he worked as Assistant Director of Education at the Cuyahoga Valley Environmental Education Center in Peninsula, Ohio, where he developed curriculum focused on incorporating appropriate technology into environmental education.   When not restoring the West Duwamish Greenbelt, buphalo is an active mixed media artist.  His art varies from sound and kinetic sculpture to large scale collaborative public art. Tying his environmental background into his art, his projects tend to have organic shapes or carry themes focused on the human relationship with the natural world.

In 2009, Elizabeth became the Program Manager for the EarthCorps Volunteer Team or ECV, a 10 month long EarthCorps program designed to teach its participants the skills needed to lead volunteers of all ages in environmental restoration projects. She is also a Project Manager for the EarthCorps Volunteer Program. In this role, Elizabeth has planned and led over 350 forest restoration projects for volunteers, ranging in size from 10 to 400 volunteers per project. She also designs forest restoration projects for youth, working with many classrooms in the Seattle area to get students outside and learning in nature. Her passion for this work comes from a desire to connect people to the green places around them, to look for the value in every day nature, and to empower communities to steward our common natural places.

 Click here for directions to Rainier Community Center

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