DWCF.

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I’m sorry I haven’t updated in so long!  Time has really been flying by, and I can’t believe I’ve already been a cast member at Disney for two whole months.  I’ve been hanging out with friends and having awesome interactions with guests at work per usual.  On Wednesday, I met up with some family members that were in town and we ate at Ohana, a restaurant at the Polynesian Resort.  It was AMAZING.  It’s totally Hawaiian themed and the food is mouth-watering.  You don’t really order, they just bring out endless bread, noodles, potstickers, and meat.  And more meat.  And even more meat.  I ate more steak, chicken, pork, shrimp than I’ve ever eaten in my life.  I’m usually what I term a “flexitarian” because I don’t eat meat more than two or three times a week.  This meal at Ohana basically filled my protein quota for the week!

I don’t really have any other updates, so instead I wanted to talk about the Disney Worldwide Conservation Fund (DWCF).  The DWCF was founded in 1995 and contributes grant money to projects around the world supporting research and conservation of endangered species.  Last year, DWCF and Disney guests contributed over $1.8 million to fund 80 projects in 40 countries working to protect wildlife and wild places.  What I think is the coolest part of the DWCF is that Disney invites guests to donate to the fund and will match your donation.  So if you visit Disney’s Animal Kingdom and donate $1, you’re actually donating $2, and the entirety goes directly to help the animals.  Every time you donate, you can get a DWCF button that says you’re a conservation hero and there are different color buttons for every location.  I have buttons from Disney’s Animal Kingdom, DAK Lodge, Disney’s Character Warehouse, and The Land at Epcot.  You can even just round up your purchase at a shop and donate the change to the fund.  It’s such an easy way to help wildlife, so I definitely encourage anyone who visits Walt Disney World to consider making a donation.  Here’s a fact sheet about the DWCF’s impact (http://cdn.media.thewaltdisneycompany.com/cdnmedia/corporatecitizenship/DWCFFactsheet_Overview_Web.pdf) and here is the organization website if you want to learn more.  They have a google earth map layer you can download to see all their different projects worldwide as well which is pretty awesome.

Today one of my leaders told us that “conservation is about people first and animals second.”  I couldn’t agree more.  Behavior change in people, such as getting someone to recycle, is the most difficult part about conservation efforts.  Sometimes it doesn’t matter how much money we pour into research because wildlife and wild places will only be saved if people decide to care about the issues facing these animals.  And people need to make a livelihood as well; why should someone change their behavior to save animals if their behavior helps them feed their families?  Providing alternative sources of income to local people is one of the only ways some species will be saved.

An awesome example of this is an organization called Proyecto Titi (http://proyectotiti.com/english/about-proyecto-titi.htm), which is empowering the people of Columbia to save the critically endangered Cotton-Top Tamarins.  The forests of Columbia can be littered with plastic bags due to a lack of garbage/recycling pick-up services.  To help clean up the Tamarins’ home, Proyecto Titi has worked with locals to help them pick up plastic bags in the forests.  They then weave these bags into eco-mochilas (basically purses).  You can buy these eco-mochilas online or at Disney’s Animal Kingdom and every penny goes back to the locals and towards Tamarin conservation.  It gives the local people an incentive to try to save the Cotton-Top Tamarins!  More projects like this around the world will help with the conservation of other endangered species as well.

Well, that’s my spiel.  Thanks for learning how organizations are helping conservation efforts around the world, and hopefully you choose to support one in the future!

Teambuilder.

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A couple nights ago, we had our very first teambuilder.  And let me tell you, we needed it.  I love my team of conservation presenters, but sometimes it feels more like competition than collaboration.  One of our coordinators planned a night for us at Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge, starting with the Wilderness Explorers experience in the park closing early for the day so we could all make it to the teambuilder.  We ate at the quick service place in Jambo House at DAK Lodge, Mara, then did a cultural safari with one of their savanna guides.

I had no idea what a cultural safari was, but it ended up being a lesson in the culture and heritage of South Africa, since that’s where our guide was from.  DAK Lodge has savanna guides from different countries around Africa that serve as cultural reps for their respective countries.  They talk about everything, ranging from the animals in their country to sports to scenic places.  My favorite part of the cultural safari was when our guide began talking about Nelson Mandela and apartheid.  He had a kind of reverence in his voice as he spoke of how Nelson Mandela was the healer of their country, and how now South Africans live together in peace after many years of war.  It was really fascinating to hear his perspective.

We also learned about the conservation education program at DAK Lodge.  Basically, the savanna guides teach guests about one aspect of conservation and the guests earn a bead.  With these beads, they make a “string of memories” they can take home to remember their time at DAK Lodge and what they learned.  I’ll have to go visit one of these days to do all the activities and make my own string of memories.

After the safari, we went out to the savanna overlooks to see animals with night vision goggles.  DAK Lodge has four savanna overlooks with animals like giraffe, wildebeest, thomson’s gazelle, zebra, and more.  It was awesome to be able to see all those animals and hang out with my team!  We also got to know our coordinator better, so that was great as well.

I had a lot of fun at the teambuilder, and hopefully it helps us all work a little more cohesively in the future.  We’re supposed to have a teambuilder every month or so, can’t wait for the next one!

And lastly, here is my conservation message for the day:

Bats can eat up to 12,000 bugs every single night, so they’re awesome bug-zappers!  If you don’t know which bats live in your area, check out www.batcon.org to see which species you have in your state.  A great way to attract bats to your backyard is to build or buy a bat box to hang on a tree.  The bats can sleep there during the day and emerge at night to eat all your mosquitoes and flies.  Really it’s a win-win for everyone involved.

Remember that conservation starts with you in your own backyard, and that you can make a difference by doing something as simple as telling your friends.  Until next time!

Dinosaurs are stinky.

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According to a five year old, dinosaurs being extinct means they are stinky.  Yup.  I love all those moments I have that would fit right into that old show “Kids Say the Darndest Things.”  While I told her that wasn’t quite right, I did show her a coprolite (fossilized dino poop….kids love poop) and told her that might have been stinky way back when.  I have at least a couple kids and even older guests every day that make me smile ear to ear, and that definitely makes up for all the rude guests I encounter each day as well.  Yesterday, I talked to a 20-something-year-old for about half an hour about dinosaurs and related sciencey things.  I LOVE when guests are super interested in what I have to say, because it makes me feel like I’m really helping people connect more with the world around us.  It’s an amazing feeling.

Our fossil badge is definitely my favorite place to be out of every position we have.  There’s an activity where the kids/adults put fossils together then guess what the dinosaurs ate and what kind of dinosaur each fossil is.  I can literally talk about anything there, and guests are fascinated by it!  Of course I owe all my knowledge to the paleobiologist over at William and Mary, Professor Rowan Lockwood.  THANKS ROWAN!  I’m officially the resident dino expert in my internship because of you!  And honestly, I’ve realized that I gained a lot of presentation skills other people may not have, since I had to do presentations so much in the geology department during school.  So shouts out to all the geology professors, thanks for preparing me so well!

The job is great, my friends are great, and I’ve settled into a comfortable life here in sunny/stormy Orlando.  No complaints 🙂  A couple posts ago, I gave a conservation message about e-recycling (shouts out to Jamison Shabanowitz for starting the e-recycling program at W&M), so here’s my conservation message for today:

If you ever see a bug in your house, don’t squish it!  All bugs play an important role in our environment, whether they eat pests for us like spiders or eat garbage and hair for us like cockroaches (fun fact: roaches are the only animals that can digest hair, so without them we’d have a very hairy world).  To help all our bug friends, make a bug box out of a cup and index card and take it outside instead.  It’s a win-win for everyone, so really just do it.

I feel like Ariel…

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…because I literally have no voice.  I love love love my job, but it has really been taking a toll on my voice.  I wake up in the morning and croak, then during the day my voice warms up, but by the end of the night it’s back to a croak.  I think this is just because I’m so enthusiastic about saying things and the fact that I talk to upwards of 300 guests every day depending how busy it is.  EVERY DAY.  The other day, I had Madagascar Hissing Cockroaches out by the main entrance to talk to people while they were entering the park, and I talked to 140 guests…in just 45 minutes.

Even though this seems like a lot of people, I actually enjoy talking to them and meeting all kinds of different people.  Animal positions are my favorite because I can talk about cool facts and their conservation status without having to rush through.  Sometimes at the Wilderness Explorer badge locations, the guests are a little more interested in just getting the badge than actually learning about the animals or conservation :/  But all of them are fun, and kids say hilarious things sometimes!

Tuesdays and Wednesdays are my days off, so yesterday I went to Hollywood Studios for the day and today I’m just hanging out with my roommate at home.  I love that there are so many options of what to do in Orlando.  I can go to Disney parks, do activities at some of the resorts, go to Universal, go to a mall, or just hang out at home.  So many possibilities and I’m excited to experience them all!

Exhausted.

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My feet hurt like craaaazy, I’m a little sunburnt, and my legs are already sore but I LOVE MY JOB!  Today was my first day of real on the job training, so I was actually out in the park all day talking with guests about our animals and conservation.  I shadowed one of my coordinators for the day and he showed me the ropes then let me go by myself for the majority of the time!

There are 31 badges for Wilderness Explorers, but troop leaders only man 8 of these badge locations.  We also stand by some animal habitats to talk with guests about what they’re looking at.  So today, I was at Insect Badge (we have live insects out for guests to see!), Gorilla Badge (with gorillas walking around in the background while I was talking with guests), the Siamang Habitat (not a badge, but awesome nonetheless), Habitat Badge (where guests can find animals in our mock backyard) and the Forestry/Animal Call Badges.  

My favorite one of the day was definitely the Siamangs.  Even though this isn’t a badge location, it was still really great to be able to talk to guests about some of the behaviors that our Siamangs display.  We also talk about ways guests can help with Siamang conservation, whether it be by donating to Disney’s Worldwide Conservation Fund, buying bamboo products in place of wood, drinking shade-grown coffee, or just telling their friends about this really cool animal.

I had a blast today talking with guests!  The little ones can be incredibly cute, but it also feels good to talk to adults and feel like I’m really teaching them something.  For example, at the Gorilla Badge one of our conservation messages is to recycle your electronics.  Children don’t really understand this, but when I had adults, I always talked to them about this.  Recycling your electronics helps gorillas and other species who live in Central Africa because some of the minerals used to make electronics like cell phones can only be mined in Africa.  This really disturbs and even destroys gorilla habitats.  But by recycling electronics, you can help reduce the habitat destruction!

I worked an 11:15 to 8:15 shift today with a couple of breaks, but the time truly flew by.  I wasn’t bored for a second.  My feet started to protest around the 7 o’clock hour, but I powered through and am so ready to go again tomorrow 🙂

Training, Training, and More Training

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This past week has been such a whirlwind, but even though I am beyond exhausted I still already love my job.  Starting June 1, Disney’s Animal Kingdom rolled out their newest experience: the Wilderness Explorers.  Now the guests can be like Russell in Up!  That meant my role as a Conservation Education Presenter switched to being a Wilderness Explorer Troop Leader.  

The Wilderness Explorer experience allows guests to become a WE by earning badges all around the park.  To earn a badge, a guest must do an activity and a cast member will give them a sticker in their Wilderness Explorer handbook.  There are 31 badges in total, and as a Troop Leader, I will be staffing eight of those badge locations (other badges can be earned at locations without a Troop Leader present).  In addition, I will periodically be in front of some of the animal habitats to talk about their behavior and bring out various invertebrates for guests to see while they are waiting to get into the park in the morning.  In the past, Presenters were in the background of Animal Kingdom and guests focused mostly on how quickly they could get on Expedition Everest and when their Kilimanjaro Safari fastpass was redeemable.  While those are definitely still important, the Wilderness Explorer experience has become the star of the park literally overnight.  Thousands of guests every day come through to the badge locations, meaning I will have SO much guest interaction!

At the beginning of training, I was given a HUGE binder full of animal facts, conservation messages, and information about the badge locations I would have to staff.  It seemed a little overwhelming at first, but I feel comfortable now with most of the basic information about the animals.  My number one priority when talking to any guest is to turn seeing an animal into an experience that changes them; one that makes them want to take conservation actions.  After today, I’ll be shadowing for a couple days then all by myself with guests in the park.  A scary thought when I think about the fact that just a few weeks ago I graduated college, and now I will be making a difference every single day using my degree.  I truly do believe I will be making a difference by teaching guests about conservation, because even if just one person switches to drinking only shade-grown coffee, recycles their electronics, or just tells their friends then I have helped make the world a better place for wildlife and wild places.

I’m still learning the ropes, but I’m confident that I’ll love this job and be moved by interactions with guests, especially children.  Can’t wait to start for real!!