Venise Evans and a few others headed to Houston for alternative Spring Break!

  Houston Texas Baby!!!! For my service learning project I got the lovely opportunity to go to Texas and do a week of service. I went to the Houston Arboretum and Nature Center and volunteered 12 hours. 

The Houston Arboretum is a huge nature preserve that sits on several acres of land. It is one of the top largest nature centers in the United States. I went with a few other students from the university and it was a privilege to work with their staff. We split our service in two days for the projects we had. We learned a lot about plants. The first day we helped out with their plant sale that they have every year and raised over a thousand dollars. The first day we also redid their rock fountain area and we truly left our mark. In the rocks we out UWF so people know that we came and did our share. The next day we helped out with the continuation of the Plant Sale and we also helped with the park. The Arboretum is a family friendly environment and it has a huge playground and park for the children to play, the group and I went to help remove waste and large rocks and sticks so that the children will not get hurt. Throughout our visit at the Arboretum, I realized how much our environment means to people and how much this world is taking away more and more of our natural land. This to me plays into Environmental Ethics. Environmental ethics is the discipline in philosophy that studies the moral relationship of human beings to, and also the value and moral status of, the environment and its nonhuman contents. We learned about this in Unit three. Why do people continue to tare down forest and use it for human consumption? How should we best use and conserve the space environment to secure and expand life? These are some things that the Person overseeing us brought up and made us all think. Why? They also expressed how much they are trying to fight and hold on to their land and keep it a preserve and a place where families can come and still have a place of peace and serenity when it comes to nature, for the people who actually care.