My Volunteer Experience

Annessa Argabright

            Volunteering has impacted my life by allowing me the opportunity to teach children and adults about God’s creation and nature. This teaching took on different venues such as; animal handling at the Dallas Zoo and working at my family’s Creative Learning Center Nature Exchange. Within our Nature Exchange I allowed children to assist me with the sorting of sharks’ teeth while they learned in an inviting and fun form, created an organization system for our Nature Exchanges point system and taught the other employees at our Creative Learning Center Nature Exchange. I was also involved in the creation of educational materials such as, games, educational posters and newsletters.

In early 2007 I volunteered at the Lacerte Family Children’s Zoo within Dallas Zoo to be a Junior Zookeeper. The Dallas Zoo was created in 1888 making it the first zoological park in the southwest. It has over 95 acres of land to explore on your visit. The zoo is widely recognized by the Lacerte Family Children’s Zoo, The Wilds of Africa exhibit and the award winning Jake L. Hamilton Gorilla Conservation Research Center. The attractions in the Lacerte Family Children’s Zoo Include: Travis and Zach’s Birds Landing: An area where you can interact and feed different species of birds, The Underzone: an area with different animals that enjoy the underground, the Pony Trek: an area where are able to ride and interact with ponies, The Kresge Foundation Farm: an area devoted to many different farm animals, you are able to interact with many of them, The JC Penny Discovery House and A.H. Belo Discovery Yard: You are able to learn about the animals and plants that are around your home and the Hillcrest Foundation Nature Exchange: an area where children can bring nature items and receive points for their items. I worked there every Wednesday for four and a half hours for 12 weeks in 2007. I worked in the farm area caring for rabbits, horses, guinea pigs and koi fish. Cleaning horse stalls, fish tanks and small animal cages, preparing the food for the animals, and helping the public with animal contact were among tasks that I completed.  

When I became 13 I was eligible to work for four and a half hours a day every Friday for 13 weeks in 2008-2009, volunteering as a Conservation Guide at the Lacerte Family Children’s Zoo within the Dallas Zoo. While I worked there as a Conservation Guide I was able to handle snakes, turtles and rats and furthered my knowledge of them after passing an animal handling test. Also; I created new and fun ways for children to learn, was taught how to clean many different types of things, enlarged my social skills and was able to help the public with their different questions and concern. I also prepared the food for rats, snakes, mice, turtles and birds, helped around the zoo with many different and difficult tasks and assisted creating new items for special occasions and celebrations around the Dallas Zoo.

Every week at the Dallas Zoo all the volunteers were taken on a tour by some of the zookeepers to different animal enclosures and exhibits. We were taught many things about the dangerous animals we were not able to help with, but were able to see them in a closer area than the public would be able to. We were also able to feed, touch, or prepare food for the not so dangerous animals.

Helping around the Dallas Zoo brought me great joy as I was able to; work with and around many great and beautiful animals which I loved, assist the zookeepers and help make their jobs easier and more enjoyable, do the various odd jobs they needed to be done, and was also able to build on certain areas in my life.

I developed friendships with many of the zookeepers and other volunteers while working and it furthered my enjoyment of working there. Deidra Willingham, Gerald Bogan and Lisa Dolliver encouraged and helped my family and I start our own volunteer ministry, the Creative Learning Center Nature Exchange in 2007.

We invited another family we knew, the Dabney’s, to help us run the Creative Learning Center Nature Exchange. What is the Creative Learning Center Nature Exchange? Children bring many different nature items, and we reward the children points for their item and they are able to purchase the many different items that we have on our store shelves. We tend to try to identify each and every item that is brought in and then we teach the child about their item or items, then after we have finished using their item or a teaching tool we put it back out for purchase. We invite our friends and neighbors to come to our Nature Exchange through our newsletter via email. Together we have put together and participated in fundraisers, were featured guest speakers at homeschool groups and created a mission statement “The Creative Learning Center Nature Exchange’s mission is to teach kids and parents about God and his beautiful creation through observation and exploration. We will encourage this through trading, activities, our library, the bible, and caring about the environment” Over the past three years our nature exchange has grown by an incredible amount. We went from a small unprofessional get together to a, uniformed, large professional exchange store. It is greatly loved by the many wonderful families that come to our Creative Learning Center Nature Exchange and some children are using it as a portion of their science curriculum.

We attended many gem shows and jewelry shows to get nature items to begin our Creative Learning Center Nature Exchange and we became receivers for some donations by some kind, giving people.

Volunteering at the Lacerte Family Children’s Zoo within the Dallas Zoo, and at out Creative Learning Center Nature Exchange has taught me to help others, to realize that I do not need to be rewarded for everything I do to assist others, to teach others in an inviting format and to serve God by teaching others about Him.