Bobbi Skenandore, a freshman at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was looking for a way to get involved.
So when an email from Tess Arenas showed up in her inbox with just such an offer, her interest was piqued. Arenas, the director of the Office of Service Learning and Community Based Research in the College of Letters and Science, was looking for two UW-Madison students to help create a summer camp to serve the Native American community.
The students would work closely with Arenas and in partnership with Dane County Parks to plan, organize and implement three camp sessions for local youth.
Skenandore, who was still undecided on her major and a member of the Oneida Nation, thought it could be a great opportunity. She signed up.
“It was a way to get involved in the community,” she says. “At first helping create the camp started as something to do something during the summer, but it evolved into much more than that.”
Nine months later, Skenandore and fellow student Lakita Maulson (a member of the Ojibwe Tribe) have something to show for it: the Mother Earth Explorers.
Together, the students launched the free club that provides Native American-themed programming for Madison-area middle school students. The camp is a mix of daily outdoor activities that focus on environmental stewardship and healthy lifestyles and involves faculty and staff from UW-Madison.
The first of three camp sessions began on June 19 and have run throughout the summer, with sessions in July and August as well. The camp is modeled after previous programs created by service leaning courses in the College of Letters & Science. These high-impact courses combine student learning with service projects, such as fishing clubs created by former students in partnership with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and Centro Hispano, a local nonprofit.
Skenandore and Maulson’s work developing the Mother Earth Explorers club started last spring when they enrolled in Environmental Studies 600, an independent study course taught by Arenas. They coordinated events and crafted a curriculum for the program that would focus on the Native American community.
“We have a strong and vibrant Native community in Madison,” says Arenas. “It’s more dispersed, but it is vibrant, and I feel it is a population that needs to be served.”
Ojibwe vocabulary flash cards. (Submitted photo)
A typical day for the Mother Earth Explorers starts at Lake Farms Park on Madison’s southeast side around 8:30 a.m. Campers spend the day participating in a variety of activities: Native American storytelling, Ojibwe vocabulary with UW-Madison Professor of Linguistics and American Indian Studies Program Director Rand Valentine and even archery lessons, which Maulson says are among the most popular activities.
In addition to teaching Native American culture, the camp focuses some activities on environmental responsibility. In one activity, the goal is to help the campers become more aware of the effect their trash can have on the environment.
“We were able to convey the idea of environmental justice in a different way,” Skenandore says. “In reality people don’t realize their particular role in environmental justice.
“We pointed out the connection between the activity and environmental justice. It opened up their eyes to the concept of environmental justice.”
For Skenandore, the experience allowed her to become more involved in the community and helped her discover a potential major: environmental studies.
Meanwhile, Maulson says she is more confident than ever that her career aspirations in either family practice or pediatrics are the right fit.
“I know for a fact I love working with people, especially youth,” Maulson says. “So to me, this club was, and is, a great opportunity to service my community and work with youth at the same time.”
They both say the best reward for their efforts has been seeing the campers enjoy the activities they worked so hard to put together last semester.
“You could just see in on their faces that they were having a lot of fun,” Maulson says. “It was a great reward for all of the planning and hard work that went into the program.”