By David A. Cohen | Executive Director
The Friends of Tryon Creek continue to be a leader in environmental education for children in the Portland metropolitan area. Already in 2011 we have served just under 3000 students, while continuing to build on a program with the Lake Oswego School District serving all of their 5th grade classes. We are working hard at raising funds for our range of education programs and in May we once again received a $10,750 grant from the Gray Family Fund of the Oregon Community Foundation to expand our very successful summer teacher workshop program throughout the state. Other grants are pending to support our overall education program, our field trip program in particular as well as our effort to find additional funding for our scholarship program. Each year over 600 children receive support and have access to programs that they would not have been able to attend without that support. In addition, the Friends summer Nature Day Camp was filled close to capacity again and remains one of the premiere summer outdoor experiences available in the metro region.
We also said goodbye to long time leader and visionary Stephanie Wagner who retied this month after being involved with the Friends educational efforts for almost three decades. Developing many of the programs and growing the organization's capacity and regional reach to attract students from outside the parks' neighboring areas, Stephanie has almost single-handedly built one of the region's strongest environmental programs for children. Her passion for environmental education and teacher training has been an inspiration throughout the broader educational community. Matthew Collins, who has been working with Stephanie for almost two years has assumed the role of Education Director. His enthusiasm and deep thinking about the issues surrounding education and how we use the asset of Tryon Creek State Natural Area to transform lives is already making a difference here.
In addition, the Friends are finishing a strategic planning process this summer which will help guide us for the next three years. The emphasis, of course, will be to solidify our efforts in environmental education, develop more resources to support those efforts and an infrastructure which will sustain the organization into the future.
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