2. Park Steward
Mission
• The National Park Foundation
was established to do the
following:
• Strengthen the connection
between the American people
and their National Parks by
raising private funds
• Making strategic grants
• Creating innovative
partnerships
• Increasing public awareness.
Photo Taken from www.nationalparks.org
3. Park Steward
Values
• Protecting fragile ecosystems and wildlife habitats through conservation
programs
• Securing tens of thousands of acres of parkland for new parks and existing
parks
• Supporting trail restoration across the country with programs like Active
Trails.
• Founding the national Parks as Classrooms program and supporting other
youth programs like America’s Best Idea Grants, Electronic Field Trip, First
Bloom, Junior Rangers, Park Climate Challenge, and WebRangers.
• Preserving our African American History in the national parks
• Leading the fundraising effort for the Flight 93 Memorial
• Creating unique opportunities for teachers and education professionals to
use the parks as teaching tools with programs like Park Teachers and Park
Stewards.
• Uniting public and private interests in support of our national parks
• Restoring the Washington Monument
• Creating national volunteer and service to the land programs
4. Stewards Make a Difference
Volunteer Stewards are individuals and organizations
committed to developing a world-class network of
parks and protected areas. They assist with the site
management and operation of a number of
protected areas throughout the province. Over 270
individual stewards and nearly 60 steward
organizations are currently involved in the program.
5. What It Means to be a Volunteer
Steward
• Encourage public participation in
site management and operations;
• Enhance public understanding of,
and commitment to, conservation
and protected areas programs; and
• Foster communication between
the public, local government, and
Parks and Recreation.
Photo Taken from
www.nationalparks.org
6. Steward Duties
• Stewards help us monitor conditions at select parks and protected areas.
• Stewards have no enforcement responsibility.
• Although they do not represent the government legally, their observations
alert us to the unique management needs of the sites they care for.
• There are two types of stewards: Roving Stewards and Stewards Assigned
to Site.
• Stewards plan to think ahead.
• To problem solve; to explain; to plan are another aspect of the Steward.
• To be actively engaged.
• Stewards have to gather relevant data.
• Stewards must be able to evaluate thinking and learning.
• Stewards must be able to offer a solution.
7. Park Stewards Responsibilities
Stewards of the Land
Roving Steward Steward assigned to site
• Not assigned to specific site • Required to visit their assigned site(s)
at least twice per year
• Free to move from site to site to
monitor, take photos, or install a sign • Observe, record, and report on
natural conditions and human
• Free to take on special short/long
activities, including destruction or
term projects
alteration, and unauthorized
• Use specialized skills and interests to activities;
assist other stewards or staff to under
• Install and maintain signs along the
take special projects.
site boundary,
• Complete and submit site-inspection
forms, which the department uses to
update its site database.
Most of the county’s trails and terrain are included within four kinds of parks and
preserves: county parks, state parks, the U.S. Forest Service (Cleveland National
Forest) and the Irvine Company.
8. Inputs
• Volunteers to maintain the lands • Conducting breeding surveys
natural resources • Installing bird houses
• Volunteers to maintain and install • Mapping special features and rare
signs around the boundary species
• Public education and promotion • Developing comprehensive
of the National Park lists(plants, birds, animals, etc.)
• Biophysical inventories and other • Organize annual site clean-up
research projects • Planning and developing site
• Making minor fence repairs improvements(parking lots, trails,
• Providing input into site ect.)
management plans • Planning and leading educational
• Conducting fund raising activates programs
• Developing interpretative trails • Designing interpretative
and signs brochures
9. Process
What are the specific needs to
operate the national park and
stay open for all to enjoy?
•Site clean ups
•Reclamation projects
•Install and maintenance of signs along
the protected boundary
•Trail development and parking areas
•Public education and promotion
•Biophysical inventories and other
research projects
•Fundraising
•Volunteers
Photo Taken from www.nationalparks.org
10. Process
• One of the Stewards Programs is an Electronic Field Trip. This is a
way to generate excitement and volunteers from the students and
instill in them an awareness of the National Parks’ historical relevance
and a passion to support this national treasure.
• The program provides high school educators with immersive
training throughout the summer in a national park, during which they
familiarize themselves with their local national park, learning about
the park’s mission, resources, and roles and responsibilities of the park
staff. The teachers then work with their park partners to develop
service-learning projects and design educational tools of relevance to
the national parks to be implemented in the upcoming school year.
The projects serve to address the needs of the parks, while at the
same time meeting local, state, and national education standards.
11. Outputs
Examples of projects completed by stewards include:
• The parks are maintained and cleaned for all visitors
• Innovative Technological Electronic Field Trips to generate public interest
and awareness
• Boundaries are maintained for safety of visitors and the parks’ indigenous
natural environment
• Trail development and parking areas
• Public education and promotion
• Protect and maintain natural ecosystems
• Brochures to promote fundraising
• Brochures that announce public events to provoke interest
12. Outcomes
• Planning and leading educational programs
• Developing interpretative trails and signs
• Designing brochures
• The Steward has explicated the maintenance to students. The Steward is
allotted the land and protects it by preserving the natural environment for
all plant and animal life.
• The benefit is in the qualitative research showing the land is prosperous
and thriving dew to the valuable work of the Steward.
• The public is more interested in visiting a well maintained park with well
developed trails.
• The community is enhanced by having vocational training in the National
Park so they can be more involved in our National Parks.
• Is there a richer appreciation of Nature and history because of this
experience?
13. Model
The Shuttleworth Foundation takes an unique way to
award funding to particular institutions
The Shuttleworth Foundation supports brilliance in
individuals and is not focused on past successes.
By freeing up 100% of a person’s time to follow their
dream, they will be able to concentrate on the matter
at hand; their dream becoming a reality.
15. Appeal to Shuttelworth Foundation
National Park Foundation
• Innovative and new ideas • Electronic Field trips
through technology • Preserving our natural
• To make the world a better resources
place through change Stewards’ Impacts are:
• Support brilliant individuals • Maintaining the land for the
not past successes future
• A community working • Thriving ecosystems
together will support each • Preservation of natural
other and make a social resources
change.
• Volunteers working for a
better tomorrow
16. Personal Connection
Philosophy
• The more we expose the thinking,
working and practices of our
organization and our projects, the
better. Exposing this information
allows other organizations, project
implementers, funders, policy
makers, change agents, advocates
and academics to learn from what we
have done, critically assess, give
feedback, and engage with us on the
issues and open the door to
collaborations.
• Openly licensing allows others to
replicate, reuse, adapt, improve,
adopt, bring to scale, write about,
talk about, remix, translate, digitize,
redistribute and build upon what we
Photo Taken from www.nationalparks.org
have done.
17. Personal Connection
Philosophy
• We support individuals through fellowships (rather than project funding) because we believe
that great people are the true change agents. They are the champions who believe in the
change they want to see in the world. They are the ones who have spent time and effort
getting to know the landscape and the network within it, who are invested personally and
professionally in the ecosystem. They have the vision, the drive, the passion and the
motivation to see the plan through, and they will continue to do so after the fellowship ends.
It is an investment in the individual and their vision for their contribution to positive change
in the world.
• We actively collaborate with others and encourage the same in our fellowships. We believe
collaboration strengthens any initiative by sharing ideas and resources, challenging each
other to do better and be better and bringing fresh thinking to the table. We do not want to
reinvent the wheel and would not want others to do so either. We do not want to compete
for resources or the attention of policy makers or beneficiaries. Working together is faster
and smarter than working against each other.
• We focus on innovation. We believe the implementation of proven ideas is important, but
there is a great deal of support for these kinds of initiatives already. We want to give the
person with the fresh idea a chance to try it and see if it brings about the positive change
they believe it will. Conventional thinking takes a great deal of time and effort to shift and
often radical alternatives are needed to bring about change.
• We make use of conventional as well as social media to drive messages into a public forum
and seed discussions, real time. We believe this helps to propagate ideas and invite
interaction and engagement from a broad range of interested individuals and institutions.
18. Community Need
• The community need is to have a place to go and “get back to
nature”.
• It is important to know what the past represents and how it will
affect the future. This land that we have for our National Parks is a
treasure that everyone can learn from.
• I would take my family to the National Park because I want them to
understand that we are here for a short time and as a
society, maintaining the Earth is our responsibility.
• Together the National Park Service and all Americans Make sure
that they are preserved for generations who will follow.
• Preservation and the future matter to all in the community
because this is your land; we are responsible for the landscapes.
Ecosystems, and historical sites—all protected in America’s nearly
400 National Parks.
19. Get Involved
• Become a Volunteer! Do something that will make a difference tomorrow
THINK CRITICALLY and ACT CRITICALLY!!!
• Join in a hike or plan a family trip. Get back to nature. Take a moment to
notice the beauty that surrounds you. How very precious and fragile the
world around us is. We are all “Stewards”. We have a responsibility to
take care of the world and keep it healthy for the next generation and the
next generation and so on.
• Search a couple of our local National Parks and see what they have to
offer.
• Mark Shields, National Park Foundation(202)354-6480,
mshields@nationalparks.org
• Do something to get yourself involved. Do something to develop students
abilities to construct ideas into thinking.
• Be apart of something great - The National Park Foundation.
