Fall 2005, Vol. 1, No. 4 | Back Issues

Volunteer Spotlights

Sara Faulkner, Research Assistant Global Infectious Diseases Program Last July Sara traveled with her church’s youth group to Chihuahua, Mexico to participate in a youth camp and help renovate the village’s Templo Bautista Sinaí Baptist church. Sara served as a group leader, accompanying 10 teenagers from Falmouth’s Cape Cod Baptist Church to support a missionary working in the area. Sara and the kids in her charge helped paint Templo Bautista Sinaí’s fence, while a men’s ministry group from her church built new bathrooms, a kitchen, a nursery, and painted the church’s exterior. Sara and the youth group also participated in and organized a drama workshop for a youth camp that drew elementary schoolchildren from throughout Chihuahua. The Cape Cod group put on skits for the Mexican children and led a “singing exchange,” where the same song was sung in English and Spanish to help break down the language barrier. “There are some universal things that we can all understand through drama and song,” Sara says. “There’s still a common bond—you can communicate and have meaningful experiences even though you don’t speak the same language.” Sara is looking forward to the possibility of another youth group trip next summer, either back in Mexico or perhaps to the Philippines to assist a missionary at a large inner-city high school. “Last summer’s mission trip to Mexico was a way to see that a building wasn’t the thing that connected us, but faith and a willingness to put others’ needs first,” she says. “It allowed me to understand what the mindset of missionaries around the world is...even if we can’t change everyone’s physical station in life, we can gain hope and a new perspective about life through faith and friendship.” Sara is active with her church’s youth group year-round and leads a drama group of 15 teenagers that meets each week. While they’ve only put on productions for their church so far, Sara hopes that the group will perform at the next House of Praise, a gathering of Cape-based Christian artists. “I’ve done drama and danced all of my life,” Sara says. “This and my work at the MBL are two totally different sides of life, but it’s good that I get to do both.”

Valerie Butcher, Database Coordinator, External Affairs For the last six years, Valerie has volunteered at the Waquoit Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve (WBNERR) in the Endangered Shorebird Monitoring Program. Each spring, the piping plovers, which are a threatened species under both the federal and Massachusetts’ Endangered Species Act, return to Cape Cod from their winter locations in the southern U.S. and Caribbean. Beginning late March, Valerie walks Mashpee’s South Cape Beach at least one day a week in the early morning or evening to monitor the plover behavior and to identify the location of nests and eggs. The nests are then protected from predators and humans by an exclosure. Valerie explains that this year the early storms washed out several nests. “It takes 28 days for the eggs to hatch and one nest was abandoned a week from the eggs hatching due to human activity at night, with evidence of a fire, beer cans, and footprints leading to the exclosure,” she says. In addition to monitoring the birds, Valerie is charged with educating beachgoers about the importance of protecting the plover nesting areas. She recalls stopping one day to talk to a woman who was walking her dog on the beach. When Valerie explained the sensitivity of the beach during plover mating season and why no dogs were allowed the woman replied, “Don’t worry about my dog, he’s great with our parrot!” In addition to her work with WBNERR, Valerie regularly volunteers with the 300 Committee for clean ups of town-managed land. She is currently involved with an invasive species project which is an ongoing effort to control phragmites and purple loosestrife. Many MBL staff also know Valerie through her work with the American Cancer Society Daffodil Days program in the spring. Valerie has coordinated flower sales at the MBL for the last four years and this year helped to raise $600 for the cause.

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