How our youngest Volunteer Leader is making a difference in her community and for the Potomac
/Fighting polluted runoff and empowering young girls in Northern Virginia
Meet Sara, Potomac Conservancy’s youngest Volunteer Leader (VLT), fierce river lover and Northern Virginian. The Potomac region shaped her childhood and was the backdrop for her favorite memories. That’s why, when Sara heard about Potomac Conservancy’s river cleanups, she was all in and ready to give back.
As a middle-schooler, Sara jumped feet first into litter cleanups attending multiple a year throughout NoVa. She wanted to make a real impact on the local environment that has given her so much. She loved that with every piece of trash she picked up, she could actually see a difference.
Leveling up her impact
After a few years as a cleanup volunteer, Sara was ready to do more for the river so she and her mom Tonia decided to become Volunteer Leaders with Potomac Conservancy! They would now be able to lead cleanups and inspire more people to join the movement for clean water. Over the past 2 years Sara has led 197 volunteers who removed 4,740 lbs of trash from shorelines!
Empowering young girls with environmental knowledge
Improving the environment wasn’t the only thing Sara was passionate about. As a Girl Scout, she was dedicated to building up her leadership and helping educate young girls in her community. Once Sara got to high school she started thinking about her Girl Scout, Gold Award which would be a culmination of her almost decade long time in the troop.
As she thought through the qualifications for the project and how much time she would spend on it, the natural fit felt like highlighting her love for improving the Potomac. Once she made that decision, she got to work.
Sara’s Gold Award, made up of 2 main parts, was very involved and took a lot of thoughtfulness and dedication to complete it.
The first part were educational workshops where she invited local Girl Scouts to learn about the Potomac River, how polluted runoff harms the river, the wildlife that depends on waterways, and what they could do to help. Each workshop was unique and tailored to who attended and their level of knowledge about the Potomac.
Sara said her favorite part of the workshops was at the end when they would do a review; she could see how much the participants learned and how they were now empowered with the knowledge of how to protect the Potomac.
The second part focused on getting the girls out to litter cleanups to see what they learned in the workshops in real time. Not only could they make a difference, they could put their knowledge to the test! By getting out to the river, they were able to deepen their love for the environment and immediately give back.
Volunteer Leaders power our clean water work
Potomac Conservancy hosts dozens of litter cleanups every year to fight the only growing pollution source to the river: urban polluted runoff. Volunteer leaders, like Sara, empower our movement to join the neighbors to make a huge impact on the river. They are essential to our work and with Sara and our Volunteer Leader’s help we collected 36,692 lbs of trash over the past 12 months. That’s the weight of two orca whales!
Our youngest volunteer leader is making waves for a cleaner river and educating youth at the same time! Safeguarding the Potomac River takes everyone from our community, it takes a village!