A repurposed research building could create a more sustainable environment to educate children about local ecology but needs financial help and additional manpower to reach its full potential.
The Waterloo Aquatic Education Center, part of the Raccoon Creek Partnership, is located at the intersection of State Routes 56 and 356 in Athens and has been serving as a space to educate children about local ecology for the past seven years.
Although it is an admired education center, it needs more money and additional volunteers to reach the goals originally set when the building was acquired from the state in 2006, said Heike Perko, director of the building.
“We’ve kind of outgrown this building a little bit,” Perko said. “But we still run lots of summer camps, day camps, and we have all of our board meetings out here.”
Although the summer camps are among the most popular in the area and always have a waiting list, Perko said the center running into some problems with the outdated features of the building.
“We really need new furnaces. All the air conditioners are broken, and the windows are not energy efficient,” Perko said. “It would be great if we could find somebody who wants to write a grant to make this building more energy efficient.”
One of the original ideas for the building was to have solar panels and be completely “off the grid,” Perko said.
“It just costs a lot of money,” she said. “We pretty much got this established right when the whole economy crashed, and a lot of grants just dried up.”
Perko added that a large cistern collects rainwater for other uses in the building other than drinking.
Another improvement Perko hopes for is a full-time staff for the center. There are currently two staff members, and each year, the center gets two AmeriCorps volunteers who do most of the work in the building, Perko said.
The current AmeriCorps volunteers are in charge of day camps this fall, one of which took place Oct. 6 and was called “Critters and Creatures,” said Darcy Vandervort, current AmeriCorps volunteer.
“So far, our first fall camp is the biggest event we’ve put on, and we had a blast with it,” she said. “We went on a nature hike and pretended to be explorers from another planet searching for animals. Everyone learned a lot, and it was a beautiful day.”
Jennifer Bowman, senior environmental project manager for the Voinovich School of Leadership and Public Affairs, said she takes her children to the Waterloo Aquatic Education Center camps because they get an experience there they would not get at other venues.
“There are 1,000 acres with ponds, trails and creeks,” Bowman said. “It’s an outdoor playground where kids can go play and learn.”
She added that her youngest son, Ethan, loves playing at the edge of the pond and finding the macro vertebrates, which he can then observe with a microscope in the center’s laboratory.
Perko said the education center would be a great place for local teachers to bring their students, if they can get trained staff members to work there.
“I would really love to make this a resource for our local schools, because field trips are cut, and kids don’t get out much anymore,” Perko said. “That’s really the goal, is to make this place a resource for the teachers and the community.”
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