In honor of the many volunteers who have made the Tippecanoe River State Park what it is today, the Friends of the Tippecanoe River State Park will be holding a Volunteer Recognition Day at the park on Saturday.
The Friends are a new organization formed in June consisting of a group of community volunteers who work with Park Assistant Property Manager Jason Hickman and Park Manager Vernon Gillum. The group provides support to the two and volunteers for activities, even performing cleanups and other services to benefit the park.
Hickman said the recognition day is a small way to show how appreciative the organization is to those who have helped the park.
“We’re recognizing volunteers that have helped throughout the year. We’ve had close to 60 volunteers donate close to 1000 hours this summer and spring, and this is just the park’s chance to say, ‘Hey, thank you, we appreciate what you did.’ So we got a variety of events going on that should be enjoyable for a lot of people,” said Hickman. Mary Perren, the secretary of Friends of Tippecanoe River State Park, said helping this organization is just one way to polish the jewel that is the park.
“This is a way for us in the community to say, ‘This is one of our crown jewels. We want to make it nice. We want to make it enjoyable for everybody to come out here and what can we do to do that?’” said Perren. (10-12-12 – Perren – What Can We Do)
One of the first tasks the volunteer organization did this year was organize a cleanup at the nature center. The group gave the building a floor-to-ceiling detailed clean, and Perren said volunteers helped out where the park’s limited staff was unable to get to, and without these volunteers, the park wouldn’t be what it is today.
One of the first things they did this year was a cleanup at the nature center, pulled everything out, gave it a floor to ceiling cleaning. Volunteers helped where the limited staff was unable to get to, so its beneficial to the park to have them.
To become a member of the Friends of the Tippecanoe River State Park, call (574) 946-3213 for more information.
