By Juliet Winegardner, Greenwich Academy Class of 2024
On Tuesday, July 11, elected officials and town staff gathered to celebrate the Greenwich Youth Conservation Program’s 45th anniversary. This program allows young members of the Greenwich community to make some money while doing meaningful work in the town’s green spaces.
The program has become so popular over the years that Christina Nappi, the Youth Conservation Program Administrator, said there was currently a waiting list of 100 teens.
For these 14 and 15-year-olds, finding a paying job is difficult. “It’s not like when we were growing up,” said Selectperson Janet Stone McGuigan, adding that young teens used to mow lawns and babysit. “There aren’t as many opportunities for our youth to work for pay and have that experience.”
The GYCP is a great way for students to get involved in the environment and see their work pay off. Participants in the GYCP do everything from planting trees, to weeding, to clearing trails, and more.
“The goal is to see the project from beginning to end. So that at some point the kids who planted these trees today will come back and say, ‘I planted that tree 10 years ago,’ and have some ownership over it,” said Joseph Siciliano, Director of Greenwich Parks & Rec.
The program not only gives the kids great work experience but also provides them with strong friendships. “It’s funny because when they get here it’s only a few of them that know each other and they sit in groups. By the time this is done, they’re all one pack,” said Darrin Wigglesworth of the Parks and Rec Dept.
Town Tree Warden Dr. Greg Kramer agreed, stating, “It is a great opportunity to meet other residents in Greenwich that they don’t go to school with. So at the end of the session, they meet new people they maybe wouldn’t have met otherwise.”
“This is a great organization that does a lot of really great environmental work, and I hope that a lot of these crew members at some point go into the green industry,” Dr. Kramer added.
