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Activity Essay

Ken Malloy Regional Park Clean-up

Date:February 13, 2010
Place:Ken Malloy Regional Park Clean-up
Written by Jieun Chung (Now Junior of Emery College)

This Saturday, Audubon led us to a different park named Ken Malloy Regional Park. From 9am-12pm we worked on pulling out a lot of non–native plants including weeds. Before we started, instructor Martin Byhower, a current science teacher at Chadwick Private School, gave a brief summary on the history of the park and guidelines to how and where to pull weeds. He informed us that the entire park used to be a huge mass of land where many different Native American tribes inhabited. Then, he as well as other experienced volunteers led us to the side of the park where we began to pull weeds. We also followed a certain technique in order to contribute to the widespread of the original indigenous plants. We were instructed to only pull out the weeds surrounding the native plants; the other weeds stayed because it helped fertilize the soil. After all of our hard effort, Mr. Byhower and the other volunteer students provided us with delicious fruits and chewy bars.
In the beginning, Mr. Martin Byhower told us to look at the bigger picture of the help we were providing to the environment. He understood that most of us were just there to get community service hours for school; however, he wanted all of us to realize how much IES Club’s contribution actually benefit global warming on earth. This motivated me and many others to work even harder that day.

Madrona Marsh Event (4/2/11)

Date: April 2, 2011
Place:  Madrona Marsh in Torrance
Written By : Jason Choi (Now Sophomore of NYU )

The IES Club members made a trip to Madrona Marsh in Torrance to volunteer for the morning. Volunteers included IES members, students from high schools and colleges, and even other club members. After everyone signed in, the day started off with sorting recyclables into four different categories: aluminum, plastic, glass, and cardboard material. After the “sorting”, volunteer manager, Ron, took 20 volunteers to go plant, while another manager took the rest of the volunteers to go weeding. As all workers stepped inside the gated marsh, they were told about why they had to weed and plant. The event managers explained to us that the weeds and grass around major plants would absorb or “steal” their water nutrients. While the group weeding consisted of over 40 people, another group was made within the weeding group to transfer newly grown plants into different flower pots to make future planting simpler.

After putting much effort into the marsh for about 90 minutes, it was break time. Lemonade and cookies were handed out to each of the members and everyone rested for about 15 minutes, until they got back to work. With about one hour left, everyone got back to weeding in a different area of the marsh that had located about 30 different major plants that inhabited native animals. After the weeding was done, a member of the Madrona Marsh group, Ryan, took the volunteers to a scenic spot on the marsh to talk about how volunteering is useful and how it can help regular-day students or people get jobs and move far and forward in life. “The day ended with a feeling that can’t be felt without volunteering. Words can’t describe the emotions felt after helping wildlife and nature. Now animals and plants can live “that” much better because of us,” said IES member Min Hong. Despite waking up early and getting dirty, volunteering at the marsh benefited everyone and everything in the end.