Conservation Volunteers and the Really Wild Show
One morning I came into work and was greeted with excitement as I heard that “the Really Wild Show is coming to Belfast”.
“Andy, but what’s the Really Wild Show… that was my first question.
Andy, my line manager, took a deep breath and began to explain… “Okay Gabry,” he said calmly “the RWS is an entertaining and educational TV series for children, full of mind-blowing facts about wild creatures”.
And I suddenly thought: “and so… what about us? Are we going to get on TV?”
Staring at me he said: “Hold your horses, Gabry! The BBC’s ‘Really Wild Show’ is set to come to Belfast on Sunday 7th August. It’s an event hosted by the Ulster Wildlife Trust (UWT) at the Bog Meadows Nature Reserve right in the middle of Belfast City and we are invited, so we need to think about activities that we can take with us to give the kids a really good, fun day out! And we MAY get on TV!”
“...yes, but who’ll be there? What are they going to do? What will the weather be like? Have you checked the forecast? And…!”
“Stop Gabry…you’ll see!” said Andy.
The day itself turned out to be a lovely, perfect, sunny day. Andy, Iris, Kate and I arrived at Bog Meadows quite early and we started setting up our games and activities. The intention was to get children and their parents in touch with the wild world in an entertaining way. We had colour dab cards, complete with double-sided sticky tape for the participants to collect samples of nature’s colour. A tree leaf identification game and a “touchy-feely” game, which was basically two boxes (very well-made by Kate) where we put different natural things and kids identified the contents by touch only. In addition, we brought a slice of tree trunk along with us. The children could try to count the rings and discover different things that happened at different times while the tree was alive.
The atmosphere in Bog Meadows was great. Before the children came along, everybody was busy preparing for the day ahead. We tried out the games and spent a lot of time laughing at each other. After a while I realised that I already knew lots of people there. There were lots of other volunteers like me. I was very happy to meet people that I knew, people to share my feelings with, other foreigners like me (I’m from Italy).
We started talking about the activities we were going to do that day and, in general about our experiences as volunteers, in Belfast and in Northern Ireland as a whole. We found ourselves in a complicated, magical land… but we didn’t have time to chat for long as children were coming and it was time to be ready to play!
Everyone really enjoyed the whole day. I even tried to have my face painted like a monkey, but the girl from the BBC was too busy. Instead, I got the opportunity to make grass heads with the people from Bryson House, reusing old tights, plastic pots and peat-free compost. That was good fun and the cute face is now on my desk, with his uncombed grass hair!
Well, this is just a peek into my world. The Northern Ireland Tree Campaign runs events across Northern Ireland, check out the event listings… perhaps I will see you at one of them, ready for another adventure.