Youngsters in the Waukegan Park District’s Explorers Camp venture into the Waukegan Township Community Garden each Monday outside the Belvidere Recreation Center and the Patricia A. Jones Center to garden and earn points toward an “eco-challenge badge.”
Jennifer Dumas, the manager of general and special recreation for the Park District, said the eco-challenge badge program is designed for families to create awareness of the environment around them.
Between gardening at home — or in a community garden — as well as taking a hike to experience nature, noticing butterflies or hummingbirds, understanding the value of recycling and more, Dumas said participants can earn points toward a variety of badges.
“This is a self-paced family activity through the summer for people to get active and to enjoy our natural environment, gain an appreciation of being outside and to engage in a health and wellness activity,” she said.
People can still become participants in the inaugural eco-badge challenge. Everyone who joins the program has until Aug. 31 to venture into nature, including several parks in Waukegan, to finish the required activities, earn badges and complete the challenge.
Dumas said as of Monday, about 70 people got materials to participate in the challenge at one of the four parks where a booklet is available. That does not include materials given to campers.
Going into the garden each Monday, campers like Anthony Lindey, a John Lewis Middle School sixth grader, and Emma Gonzalez, a fifth-grade student at Prairie Trail Elementary School in Wadsworth, like both the activity and occasionally taking some produce home.
“My grandfather is a landscaper, and I help him on the farm,” Emma said. “It’s a lot of fun. It makes me proud that doing this will help me earn a badge.”
When Anthony learned the gardening he does on Mondays can help him earn an eco-challenge badge, he said it motivates him to work harder. He looks forward to doing the other activities with his mother. He also knows what he wants her to do with the peppers he picked on Monday.
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“I want her to make a spicy soup,” he said.
As the campers work in the garden, they are helping to feed people as well as earning points. Waukegan Township Supervisor Marc Jones said the township’s community garden provides produce for seniors.
Completing the challenge — six badges are earned altogether to complete the program — is about more than gardening. Dumas said it is one of the six tasks, and four can be completed in a garden.
While tending a garden at home or elsewhere, Dumas said participants can watch for butterflies and/or hummingbirds to earn the “butterflies and/or hummingbirds badge.” Eliminating pesticides, growing native plants and adding some milkweed help attract butterflies.
Using all five senses either in a garden or elsewhere outside is a way to earn the “five senses badge.” Dumas said all five possibilities exist in a garden.
“You can taste the vegetables, smell the flowers, see the different colors, hear birds and safely touch different textures of leaves or rocks,” Dumas said. “You can search for ladybugs, grasshoppers, butterflies and ants. That earns the ‘insect discovery badge.’”
Each time a participant finishes a requirement for a badge, Dumas said they should snap a picture of the effort and take it to one of four appropriate parks — the Belvidere Recreation Center, the Jack Benny Center in Bowen Park, Nature’s Classroom in Bevier Park or the Urban Ag Lab in Bowen Park — for certification.
Earning a hiking badge is another part of the challenge. Dumas said that using the trail in Bevier Park or somewhere else in Waukegan, participants need to find seven things along the path, which can include a stream, an oak tree, a white flower, a hawk, a bird’s nest, a “really cool walking stick,” a pine tree, a deer, a rabbit or a butterfly.
When the initial five badges are earned, Dumas said the final effort is obtaining the recycling badge by going to the Urban Ag Lab Greenhouse in Bowen Park to find a recycling logo with a secret eco-badge message.
“It will show you how to decipher and enter the message,” Dumas said. “Recycling is very important to our environment.”