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Instructor: "Now, I would like you to stop, look around ...
and then look at your map and try to determine where we are on the map."
The goal of the youth centers network is to provide
places for kids to get outside.
To experience outdoor recreational activities
that haven't experienced before
and to teach them about conservation.
It is a message that's been missing in the youth these days
and we're trying to reach them through activities,
through boating, through fishing, through shooting sports, through archery,
through wildlife viewing and reach them with fun activities
and get the conservation message to them.
Today we're in West Palm Beach at the Everglades Youth Conservation Camp
and we are presenting a program to fourth graders.
Sixty fourth graders have come today to do the Charlie Pierce Day Program.
Charlie Pierce is a character in "The Last Egret".
It's a book written by Harvey Oyer
and it's about his childhood growing up here in South Florida,
traveling through the Everglades and his experiences.
So we have taken the book and developed ciriculum
and the 4th graders in Palm Beach County have already read the book
they've done the curriculum in school
and now they're coming out to this site
to do the things that Charlie did. Charlie went on boating trips
so they're doing boating today.
Charlie was a hunter
so they're doing some archery today, they're learning to do archery.
Charlie was a fisherman so they're fishing today.
They're doing the wildlife viewing. They're doing some bird identification.
They're doing all the things they learned about by reading "The Last Egret".
They're doing it here at this site.
"Well, Charlie Pierce as a character, as a real life human
but as a character for these children gives them something to relate to.
Charlie and Tiger and Lilly grew up here, they're real characters,
and they had the same moral decisions and delimmas
that a child in today's world has.
But they lived in a different type of Florida,
a Florida that we want our children to know something about.
So by having a Charlie Pierce day we give today's Floridians
and tomorrows future leaders of Florida
an opportunity to understand Florida in a fundamentally different way
than I think they would otherwise. We allow them to look back a 100 years
and see what the very fragile, natural beautiful world of Florida is,
not just the urban Florida that we live in today ...
and Charlie Pierce days gives them that very opportunity."
At the end of the day we hope the kids leave here enjoying nature.
We hope they go home and they ask their parents ...
"Can we go fishing this weekend? Can we go hiking?
Can we go kayaking on the river?
Can we get outside and enjoy what Florida has to offer?"
And in doing that they're going to learn that nature needs to be protected,
it needs to be valued, and that's what we're hoping to teach them today.