Friends August Newsletter

Time flies when you’re having fun! Just like that kids are headed back to school and our busy, jam-packed summer of educational sessions, hikes, swim lessons and more, is over!

Engaging our youth is a fundamental investment in the future of conservation and our island community. We thank you for gifting us the opportunity to offer scholarships to nine students, engage 200 kids with a robust summer camp curriculum, employ 15 high schoolers in our Summer Trail Crew, and teach some 100 kids to swim. Your support makes a difference!

As we look ahead to the new school year and the upcoming season our focus at Friends of Virgin Islands National Park is on monitoring beaches as the sea turtle nesting season gets going, engaging with local schools to schedule trips to the Park through our School Kids In The Park (SKIP) program, planning seasonal visitor outreach and seminars, and working closely with our Park counterparts on support requests and planning for the coming year.

In addition, we have hired a small crew of young adults who regularly work on Friends terrestrial projects to begin work clearing the most popular trails. Thanks to all the rain we’ve had, if we waited until our normal trail work start date of October, many trails would be completely overgrown. If you see the crew when you are out exploring, please say hi and thank them!

We hope that you had as much fun this summer as we did! Read the newsletter here.