On October 17, 2009 the Missouri Clean Water AmeriCorps Program in Columbia teamed up with the Jumpstart Missouri AmeriCorps Program to provide children’s activities at the Sustainable Living Fair. The Sustainable Living Fair, organized by Mid-Missouri Peaceworks, was held at Columbia College from 10:00 a.m. -6:00 p.m.
We set up two fun (and secretly educational) activities at our outdoor booth. One- which actually attracted more adults than kids- is lovingly referred to as Macro Match. By overturning the rocks in our “streams,” kiddos can find “macros” and determine which stream is healthy and which stream is polluted. We didn’t have too much interest, mostly because of our second activity…
Kids and grown-ups alike could not resist helping us decorate our beautiful, demonstration rain barrel! We invited fair-goers to stick their hands in paint and place their handprint on our barrel. The end result was a colorful example of how individuals can personalize this great water-holding device.
Although the event was a little slow
in the morning, we started to have more visitors in the afternoon. At this point, the Jumpstart members became very useful as
they could work with the children while parents and other adult fair-goers asked questions about Missouri River Communities Network
to the Clean Water members. All told, between 300 and 350 people visited the Sustainable Living Fair!
