This semester’s Teen Conservation Interns, Solis Anguiano and Xiara Diaz, worked together to plan, advertise, and lead two invasive plant management workdays and coordinate a very large site for the Earth Day Napa Community Cleanup.
Solis and Xiara concluded their internships last week. Before they left, we asked them to share some highlights of working with Napa RCD:
“In our internship, we have had the opportunity to help plan different volunteer events throughout the community by doing some social media and community outreach as well as participating and leading the events. We learned many new things relating to weed management, trash sorting, and so much more. Something we did not expect to be part of this? The amount of public speaking we would be doing, especially during the Earth Day Festival!
We are both interested in pursuing a career where conservation will play a big role. Participating in volunteer events that benefit our community/environment is something that we will definitely be doing in the future, as well!
What did we learn? We noticed that the more we knew about a topic, the more confident we felt talking about it. For example, neither of us knew much about weed management prior to this internship, but after preparing for our first event on removing invasive plants, we were able to confidently educate people about the reasons behind the specific weed removals that we were leading at Westwood Hills.
One thing that we’ll take with us as we move forward is having the ability to adjust to last minute changes and different audiences!”
Here at Napa RCD, we’d like to thank Solis and Xiara for all of their hard work this spring! Both of them brought energy, creativity, and a willingness to learn new things to this position, and we couldn’t be more grateful for the work they did and community they helped to build! Good luck in the future, Xiara and Solis!