15 Apr Shining Stars: Celebrating National Volunteer Week

A big staple of our organization are the volunteers to come to the zoo year round to support us! Whether it is to help with a special event, maintain our gorgeous gardens, provide educational material to our visitors or help guests participate in a scavenger hunt, volunteers truly make an impact in every aspect of our organization. This week we celebrate each and everyone of them!

Special Events:

From student groups to a weekend helping hand, we have a wonderful group of volunteers that are on deck to lend a helping hand at any of our special events that happen throughout the year. Whether it be our Grand Opening Celebration, our winter Cookies & Cocoa with Mrs. Claus, and everything in between we have an amazing team of volunteers that contribute their time whenever they can. They are what help make these events so special!

Docents:

Our docents are the friendly faces that you see throughout the zoo who provide you with all of the fun animal facts and a special look into each of the individual animals that we have here at the zoo! Docents go through intensive training as they are educated on each of the species here at the zoo so they have a wealth of knowledge when it comes to answering any and all questions that our visitors may have!

Gardeners:

Year-in and year-out we have dedicated gardeners who come to help maintain the grounds and the beautiful gardens throughout the zoo. If you are from the Northeast, you know how brutal our winters can get but every year our gardeners are ready all year round to tend to the flowers and landscapes to ensure that your visit to the zoo is not only a fun but a beautiful place to be as well!

Weekly Volunteers:

We even have volunteers who contribute their time and their skills on a weekly basis here at the zoo! Whether it’s creating beautiful items to sell in our gift shop like the hand embroidered animal ornaments or the hand painted penguin ornaments that made their debut during our Penguin Palooza event to even those who donate material goods for our events and animal care projects! Our weekly volunteers dedicate their time to help in any way that they can for projects big or small!

The fact that each and every volunteer that helps at the Ross Park Zoo is doing so out of the goodness of their hearts, makes their contributions that much greater! Their love for this place as well as the trust to support our organization is one that does not go unnoticed. The next time you are at the zoo and you see one of our volunteers, we encourage you to give them a special thank you as they help contribute to the amazing experience that families have here at the Ross Park Zoo!

Are you interested in volunteering? Contact Kathy at kwhyte@rossparkzoo.org or go to our website: https://rossparkzoo.org/volunteer/

Have a topic of interest? Let us know in the comment section below!