Volunteer Opportunities for Western Connecticut

In partnership with United Way of Western Connecticut

The Old Quarry Nature Preserve and Science Center
Gio Ogno, Director
PO Box 1750 - New Milford, CT 06776
Tel:860/354-7592 - Fax:860/210-1653
Cell:917/703-9560 - Gio Ogno@aol.com

The Old Quarry Nature Center & Science Center: Our Mission & Programs
We have three main goals as Friends of the Old Quarry: Preservation, Health, and Education.
In Preservation, we have focused on Access, Orientation, Monitoring, Security, and History in protecting the OQNC for passive recreation as a "forever wild" open space, keeping its quarries, groves, and wetlands in their original state for Greater Danbury while providing safe access for the public and for educational groups.

• Access: We now provide dawn-to-dusk hiking via our eastern Rogers Park Pond pedestrian entrance, with parking on Memorial Drive. The rehabilitated pond is a good introduction to the OQ. A repaired gate secures the western entrance for pre-arranged visits by groups using the OQ. Parking is now easier and more dry thanks to fill and shale provided by the city.
• Orientation: We have posted new signage at the Rogers eastern entrance and improved visibility for our wood sign where our Maple Lane western entrance for groups leaves Mountainville Road.
• Monitoring: An intern from Nonnewaug Agri-Science & Technology Center is providing onsite monitoring, GPS measurement, and environmental recording in 2004-2005.
• Security: An uninhabited space of 75 acres in the heart of downtown Danbury is highly vulnerable to vandalism, squatters, fires, dumping, and other ills of modern life. We seek to make all groups stakeholders in our future by encouraging public use and by providing ongoing activities.
• History: We are building on the work of the first OQ director, re-establishing our database of her 380+ articles on environmental issues in Danbury in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s and by publishing "then and now" updates on Danbury-specific concerns in the Danbury News-Times, a publication which has always wonderfully supported of our ongoing activities and programs.
  
  

• Signage: We have modified our signage to make it less vulnerable to vandalism. In moving from fixed trail plaques to numbering point of interest high on trees, we also now have greater flexibility in modify these trail highlights. Instead of plaques, we can now provide more detailed information on the trail maps, enabling us to modify it as nature and its seasons change.
• Info Kiosks: To provide a starting point for these trails and to mark the east and west entrances Abbott Tech constructed "entrance information kiosks" in 2003. These provide bulletin board space for announcements and protected storage bins for trail maps. They can provide fitness information.
• Trail maintenance: We continue our popular Spring and Fall cleanups to keep trails safe.
• Coordination: The FOQNC is also one of the key properties in the planned Ives Trail. This eventually will extend from the recently restored nearby Rogers Park Pond down through Ridgefield. By doing this we are also part of the planned Greenway that will coordinate existing preserves from Bethel to the Coast. The Mayor of Danbury has a major commitment to the environment, to green space, and to providing outdoor resources in educating Danbury's children. We offer our spacious 35x75' fully equipped Science Center to all groups interested in environmental issues, the biological sciences, and increased use of Danbury's green spaces.
• Communication: Since its inception the OQNC has received frequent and generous coverage from the Danbury News-Times, increasing awareness of our facility availability.
• Community: Local organizations help us meet our needs by donating time & resources so that we may in turn help their employees, families, and the Danbury community. We hope our next project is to make our trails fitness courses with workout stations and fitness suggestions geared to our locales.
  
  

• Outreach: We have begun a program of outreach to residential, community, and educational groups, including senior housing at Rogers Park Pond and ethnic groups using the athletic fields on Memorial Drive to encourage use of the OQ and determine their unique needs. E.G., we are adding benches and measuring trail elevations and distances to make our trails friendlier to seniors.
• Improvement: Abbott Tech not only created the Info Kiosks, but also has installed new doors and entrances for the disabled. The City of Danbury Conservation Commission provides portable toilet facilities in warm weather and comes to the rescue when trees fall and access is impaired.
• OQ Wildlife Video Internship: This year we have an intern filming the OQ wildlife to create a half-hour video about this and to create awareness of the OQ's resources on cable television.
• University of Connecticut's Master Gardener Program: We seek an intern to document the flora of the Nature Center and address native plant/invasive plant issues in Danbury.
• Curriculum Development. We are coordinating curricula and operating procedures with other nature centers so that the Science Center meets current professional standards. We find it particularly important to have well documented procedures for keeping track of students and ensuring safety for school trips. We of course are having to adapt other curricula by making them specific to the unique features of the Old Quarry
• School Programs. We maintain contact and coordinate with science teachers and coordinators at public and private educational institutions in our community to make them aware of the Science Center's resources and availability for classes as a nearby safe and accessible environmental laboratory - an integral part of science curricula. We work with teachers and institutions who wish to involve the community in programs of study focused on the environment, combining current curricula, equipment, and materials with local issues and environmental features. The Center provides both nature and full educational & lab facilities for local schools now wary of making far-away field trips.
• Peer Mentoring: The CT association of nature centers and Black Rock Forest, a 4000-acre preserve in the Hudson Valley sponsored by public and private schools, have generously provided curricula and guidance to handle large groups of students safely and effectively.
• Home Schooling. We are a field lab and independent learning center for home-based schooling. We tailor our curricula for small groups and individualized instruction programs.
• Teaching Tools. We continue working with our long-term local partner, Abbott Tech, to enhance facilities for the increased use the Science Center is getting. In 2004 this includes:
• individual storage space for student specimens and reference materials in our lecture space;
• new task lighting in our lab area for more accurate examination of geological and biological specimens;
• additional tables for examination and identification of specimens, a corporate gift;
• provision of professional microscopes for entire classes of children, a university gift;
• relocation of our library with improved seating and lighting for use of reference resources onsite. 1/2005

Description:




The Old Quarry Nature Preserve & Science Center:
Created by volunteers and community contribution
Dear Friends,
This long description of how volunteering has helped us become who we are and how it is creating our future role in the Danbury community has three parts - so skip ahead if you'd like!
First we'd like to give you an "Introduction and overview". There's some overlap here with our History+Vision and our Mission Statement. But these remarks are focused on the key role volunteers have with us - for we have no paid staff. We're all volunteers! And we carry out our mission for usually less than $1000 a year.
Second there are highlights for "Specific volunteer opportunities". These of course are spelled out in the "position descriptions" but we feel it important for all of us at the Old Quarry to realize how all of us work together - and to remind ourselves we can swap areas where we're active at any time. These are anti-jobs. We're not looking to get free labor; we want to give all of us making the Old Quarry happen personal opportunities.
Third we have listed here our "Interest inventory". Volunteering is a process for us. These non-jobs have no start or end date, no hours to speak of, and we look to all of us for direction no matter what we're doing. This is why this interest inventory is so important to us. Please use "reflections" to give us feedback! Copy the inventory or parts of it and tell us what you think we should be doing, what's of interest to you - we are run by y'all!

Introduction and Overview: how we serve with help from our friends
The Old Quarry was created in 1964 by Danbury citizens who realized how precious open space is - and how much it was endangered.
The Old Quarry had become a town dump. It took volunteers 3-4 years to clear out the debris. Scouts became rangers. Our director began his involvement as a volunteer ranger on his Saturdays off from teaching.
When it was realized that a field house would be needed to house collections and provide a place for educating about the environment, Danbury's artists contributed work for auction to buy the materials needed. The materials were provided at cost by Danbury's businesses. Danbury's tech high school, Henry Abbott Tech built our 75' x 35' field house.
This tradition continues. Abbott Tech has made entrances handicapped friendly, provided secure doors, and is now creating sample storage and lab table lighting for student groups.
Businesses such as Costco are providing equipment. Western Connecticut State University is donating over 30 microscopes. The Kent CT Mining Museum is donating computers. Danbury's schools are donating software. We now have a library - and nature reference books are welcome!
There's more we wish to do with this jewel of a small space so near Main Street and Danbury's schools and parks. We wish to use the Old Quarry's diverse environments to inform people about what's happened ecologically in this area over past millennia. And to help them question and plan what could happen in years to come. We have a mission - and would be glad to share our statement of that mission. And it is volunteers who will make this all happen in the years to come. We invite you to join us.

Specific Volunteer Opportunities: an overview
We are seeking specialized volunteers in these areas - for starters:
Website Support
Media Awareness
Trail Monitoring
Nature Walk & Talk Guidance
Fitness Trail Planning
Danbury Environmental Dialogue
Community Group Communication
School & Teacher Coordination
History & Research

Here is some more detail about these opportunities:
Website Support
We realize that more and more people are getting information through the internet. We realize our trail maps must be available on the web since vandalism often makes them unavailable at our information kiosks. We want to increasingly tie in our small site into CT's thriving community of environmental educational organizations (the COEEA). We all have a role to play. And we can coordinate this through our website. Danbury Public Library supports us totally in this effort. Is this something you'd like to become involved with?

Media Awareness
Danbury's News Times and other publications have been stalwart supporters of the Old Quarry's efforts to clean up the trails and provide a space for educational opportunities. In today's media world however doing this requires more experience and skill than any of us now have. We had great contributions in the past which have made Danbury aware of how we can be used. We welcome people with experience and skill with Danbury's media to expand this awareness - and make it a two-way street where we listen as much as we tell.

Trail Monitoring
A nature center is a nature center is a nature center. There are trails to be checked and cleared. We need to provide a safe space. And we need to make it accessible to families with children, students, exercisers, and our senior citizens and elders. Nature has a way of always providing work for us in this area. And it's fun to do!

Nature Walk & Talk Guidance
The Meserve Fund of Danbury has generously provided us with grants to document the environmental and wildlife features of this precious space. This has resulted in the Meserve Ecology trail. John Pawloski of the CT Mining Museum has not only provided us with his collections of geological specimens, but has mapped out in a Geology Trail our unique features. Quarrying reveals earth's secrets. We invite you to help us share them.

Fitness Trail Planning
Because we are in the very heart of Danbury we must consider what we can do for those who are fitness minded and wish to use nature to improve their health. Although we are surrounded by areas which provide large spaces for recreation and sports, our educational trails perhaps may provide an opportunity to learn by becoming fit. We would like to investigate how this can be done while at the same time preserving our mission of keeping the Old Quarry forever wild. This will be an adventure for someone willing to look far and wide in this well-meaning but sometimes hard to realize in practice field.

Danbury Environmental Dialogue
Danbury has undertaken to be part of a massive effort to provide a green space from Bethel to the Coast. The Ives Trail is part of this. The Old Quarry has a small but perhaps important part to play in this quilt of environmental spaces and groups. Only by working together can we begin to provide the kind of green space people were able to enjoy in CT in our earliest of times. Someone who likes working with the many diverse groups of the Danbury Community will enjoy this challenge.

Community Group Communication
Our director is a stalwart speaker and coordinator with Danbury's many communities and community groups. We do not consider our mission anywhere near complete unless we reflect what the community in all its diversity needs and wants. But this is not a solo act. Since our community is diverse we need help from all quarters - the more diverse the better. We want to listen to Danbury, know the pulse of Danbury, and how we can help.

School & Teacher Coordination
We are first and foremost an indoor/outdoor lab. This is what we do best. Getting the word out though in the increasingly complex and harried world of education - public, private, and home schooling - requires contact, contact, contact. Teachers welcome this opportunity. But we have found that different schools and science programs have very specific curricular and organizational needs. Navigating these waters requires experience and flexibility in this world. Do you know of someone who might help here?

History & Research
We have a treasure trove of 385 articles published in the News Times and written by one of our founders, Virginia Welch. Virginia is still watching over us and encouraging us. She's available near Storrs not simply to help write the environmental history of Danbury - something sorely needed - but to research how we got to where we are. In this way we hope to link past, present, and future - and put our environmental challenges in a historical context. This is research made alive. This is history becoming a guide and mentor - helping us consider the options we face today.

Help us discover other volunteer opportunities
We've learned one thing in this adventure. We don't have the answers. But we can begin to ask the right questions. Help us by asking us your questions. Challenge us by asking "why not?", "what if?" Direct and guide us with your ideas and imagination. We provide the product of a long line of volunteers from the past. This is your heritage. Use it!
Please contact us through our Director, Gio Ogno. It is by sharing ideas and pooling efforts that we have succeeded thus far in recreating this jewel of wild life and diverse environments in downtown Danbury.

Our Interest Inventory: please use reflections to give us feedback!
Thank you for your interest in helping us improve the Old Quarry! We would like to know where we could best channel your talents. Use this framework as you wish. Take as much space as you need. Don't be boxed in! Use several lines if you wish. We've given it to you just to help give you a starting point. Use reflections for your feedback. First, tell us something about yourself:
Tell us where you think we should put our priorities, our emphasis. In general, we at the OQ do whole things, often outdoors, where you can see results. Talk to us about the items that most interest you and use "Reflections" to talk at length about what we should do. And yes - if you spot something here you think you might want to talk about and explore without responding to a "Position" this is the place to do that. These are some of the things we have done and do now. Help us imagine what we can and should do tomorrow!


• Trail maintenance
• Trail landmark education
• Docent to guide and inform people using the OQ
• Monitor use of the OQ, report damage, be our eyes & ears onsite - and hike & roam
• Cleanup day
• Native plants
• Geology and mineralogy
• Environment issues
• Site restoration
• Outreach to neighbors, seniors, ethnic groups
• Coordination with other nature centers
• Outreach to schools and universities
• Helping school science classes use the OQ as an outdoor/indoor science lab
• Science and environmental curricula development and expansion
• Facilities repair, improvement, and expansion
• Outdoor classroom areas identification, clearing, and development
• Library rationalization, weeding, and acquisitions
• Audio/visual resources, equipment, and use research on environmental issues
• Writing on environmental issues for local publications
• Publicizing OQ resources, activities, and events to our communities
• Website expansion, updating, revision, spiffying up, and additions
• Setting up donated computers and software for use by school classes
• Links to related environmental groups, centers, and resources
• Internships
• Board policy and decision making
• Grant writing
  
  
Send this Gio Ogno, 108 Heacock-Crossbrook Road, New Milford, Connecticut 06776, email GioOgno@aol.com, fax:860/210-1653, or call 860-354-7592. Thank you! 4/2005

Friends of Old Quarry Nature Center



History:
The Old Quarry Nature Preserve & Science Center: History and Vision

The Old Quarry Nature Center has transformed a dump in the heart of Danbury into seventy-five forever wild acres embracing two limestone quarries in addition to woods, fields, wetlands, and a stream. In the 1970s Danbury's artists donated their work for auction to buy building material which in turn was transformed by Danbury's technical high school to create a 35x75' field house. As interest in environmental issues subsided in the 80's and 90s, the site then fell dormant. From 2000 on, Gio Ogno, a ranger for OQNC at its building who has taught science in Danbury for three decades, has worked with a new board to re-invent the OQNC as a teaching science center with revitalized support from the community.
The Meserve Foundation has funded the mapping out of an ecology and geology trail. Another intern from Nonnewaug High School in Woodbury, CT is using GPS measurement to identify where to place resting benches for seniors from nearby senior housing so they can use the trails more readily. We are now considering adding exercise stations.
Abbott Tech High School made the field house handicapped accessible. It is now creating science center features such as individual student project storage spaces, installing lab table task lighting donated by Costco, and refitting windows that were nailed shut. We are excited by this transformation of a passive nature center into an actively used facility for public, private, and home-schooled educational groups.
Weston State CT University has announced the donation of 30+ microscopes to assist in this mission. John Pawloski, Director of the CT Museum of Mining and Mineral Science has announced the donation of computers. (John mapped out the geology trail and donated his collection of CT and Danbury-specific minerals - including exhibition cases.) The Danbury schools science coordinator has offered science software. A further donation of mineral collection from the University has been made.
The Meserve Fund has funded a second intern filming the Wildlife of the Old Quarry, to be used both as a stand-alone video and to expand awareness of the Old Quarry on this intern's cable television nature program. The Danbury Library is hosting and expanding a website to further community access.
We have launched an outreach program especially targeted to Danbury's seniors, Mothers with children, youth groups, clubs, and volunteer organizations. Danbury's Volunteer Center has guided us and provided the skills and time necessary to expand our outreach. Gio Ogno is now being asked regularly by Danbury's schools to address teachers on how to use the OQNC as a local indoor/outdoor science center - particularly important in this era of greatly reduced field trips. The community groups Gio has addressed have responded by donating funds for improvements and peoplepower to improve access & promote use.
We have had to confront issues common to many nature centers in these attempts to reach out. One of these is vandalism. Because we are small and specialized, we have turned to other, larger nature centers. To help us in our curriculum development Black Rock Forest in the Hudson Highlands has give us their curricula and guided us with procedures they have worked out with their consultants and their consortium member schools to manage student groups safely and effectively in a wild environment. The CT organization of environmental education centers has enabled us to remain a strictly voluntary group.
Lastly, we are honoring our founders and history. Virginia Welch, now in her 80s has shared the history surrounding the OQNC's creation. We are rediscovering, preserving & updating 385 articles she wrote on environmental issues in Danbury in the 1970s.
Please contact us through our Director, Gio Ogno, at 860-354-7592 or 917/703-9560, at GioOgno@aol.com, or by fax at 860-210-1653. It is by sharing ideas and pooling efforts that we have succeeded thus far in recreating this wild jewel of wild life and lands in downtown Danbury. 4/2005




Contact person: George Ogno, Director, (917) 703-9560, (email)


Office fax number: (860) 210-1653

Address:


PO Box 1750 New Milford, CT 06776


Web Site: http://www.danbury.org/oldquarry/

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