Over the past several years, we’ve been working to bring environmental education to our watershed community by helping people connect to their neighborhood creek and understand that all of us have a role in protecting and restoring it.
This summer we’ve been excited to introduce the Creek Mobile, a new environmental education tool that will help us bring more fun, watershed-education activities to the Tacony Creek Park trail and into our surrounding neighborhoods.
The Creek Mobile is a cargo-bicycle (think tricycle with a big box on the front) that TTF and our Trail Ambassadors ride along the Tacony Creek Park trail, part of the Circuit Trails Network. We’ve loaded it up with all sorts of fun activities and community resources. When it reaches a neighborhood gateway, the Creek Mobile is transformed into a pop-up watershed education lesson. Visitors can learn all about the creek, the plants and animals that call the park home, and ways that we all can help protect this amazing community resource.
The games and activities we’ve lead this summer have already helped many people (over 150 kids and adults so far!) understand what’s happening in their neighborhoods when it rains, where their drinking water comes from, what a combined sewer system is (and why swimming in the creek is a bad idea) as well as the exciting work being done in our communities to restore the health of our creek.
The Creek Mobile program has been made possible with support from the Joseph Robert Foundation and the William Penn Foundation’s Alliance for Watershed Education initiative, as well as support from the Philadelphia Water Department.
Our summer schedule has come to a close, but be on the look out for us popping up on the trail this fall and at our regularly scheduled Nature’s Hidden Surprises lessons!
