Connect a child to Nature through a Week of Camp!

Hey everyone,

Piedmont Wildlife Center has been through a lot since COVID-19 has started to affect our programming.  We had to cancel five weeks of spring intersession camp, our homeschool program, and we can no longer hold our afterschool programming either.

If you happened to recieve our organization's newletters in October and November in 2019, you would know that our organization had to dig ourselves out from a financial hole; we did a great job fundraising during that time, but we are still affected by that situation today.  Because we are now losing our spring revenue, and registrations for future programming until this pandemic ends, our organization is in a tight spot. We have had to make very difficult decisions. One of these choices includes furloughing our staff starting on April 13th.  We are striving to work on a plan that could prevent us from having to do that, but until alternative funding is in our hands we have to move forward with the furlough.

Because so many things have been turned upside down and because there is a lot we need to do in the next two weeks, these things are taking a long time to address.  Like many people (which would likely include yourself), we have been experiencing grief and are trying to adjust to these changes. Some days we are optimistic, and some days we are pessimistic; regardless, we still have each other.

We were able to have a few Wild For A Days and our Homeschool In The Wild Program in Febuary and early March before COVID-19 changed everything, and I can tell you right now that there are kids who miss these programs dearly.

Thank you for your love and support, if you are able to donate any amount to us, we would be extremely grateful. Every dollar counts, and we are here because of community support.

We had a lot of great moments in our winter season camps; the kids being off school and home for the holidays brings out a unique energy among them;  however, a really special week was Village Camp. This camp is where kids learned a bit about what life was like when the world was covered in small communities.  They went over non-verbal communication, music making, and story telling.  One of the reasons it was special is because one of our seasonal staff, Roman, came to visit us in North Carolina while he's on break from teaching in Alaska!  Roman has been working closely with the Yup'ik people in Alaska, and got to teach the kids about the differences between Yup'ik culture versus the customs we have in North Carolina.

The wildest day was the Walkabout Day; on a weekly basis in our camps, we take the kids on an adventure by a body of water.  If you enjoy beating on drums, bellowing bamboo cuttings, and a hootin'-and-hollerin', you would've loved to join the jams by Merganser (a part of the wetlands near by Leigh Farm Park, named after Merganser ducks).  We found these huge grape vines, which were fun to swing around on.  Because the weather was warm that week, with the highest being 74 degrees fahrenheit, we took to opprotunity to enjoy the mud!  We created Tree Spirits and got pretty muddy ourselves.

Your donations help create these moments.  The moments on how to create different greetings, how villages solve problems, and how to make a ton of noise with bamboo will likely last in these children's minds for their entire lives.  Winter can often be a stressful time of year, but also a great time to bring people together.  Thank you for being a friend to the Piedmont Wildlife Center!