The Durant Sustainability Coalition is having its second-annual Earth Day festival from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. Saturday, April 26 at Carl Albert Park with numerous activities scheduled.
DSC Chair Jeremy Spence said that working with the City of Durant Parks & Recreation Department, DSC is able to spotlight Earth Day and think about being conservationists for the region.
“Having an annual day around that real highlight of being able to educate, energize the most people and hopefully, those are just like little drops that permeate through the community,” Spence said. “Around that, we want to keep it fun. We want it to be enjoyable and learn while you engage.”
The free event will have many giveaways such as overnight stays at the downtown Brick Street Hotel and a $250 landscaping package from Lowe's that will include trees and shrubs. Bicycles will be given away to children and there will be many activities and games for them to play.
“Our local Girl Scout Troop is leading a lot of the youth activities,” Spence said. “Durant Green School Team is doing a lot of demonstrations and activities throughout the day. So, there’s a lot going on for you to learn, engage, win, have fun. We’ve even started with some personal health as well. In the morning, we’re actually having a group-led exercise class. We’ve got a local instructor here from the library that’s going to be leading some various group exercises for all skill levels so you can come on out and start your day in the park with a good stretch, good workout and then at noon, we’re going to start with an opening ceremony.”
Simmons Bank is providing free hot dogs and popcorn starting at 11:30 and there will be programs throughout the afternoon.
According to Spence, there were 25 vendors last year despite it raining and more than 300 people attended. He expects about the same amount of vendors this year.
“We have a lot more educational vendors and demonstration vendors this year which is amazing because that’s what we’re really about,” Spence said. “It’s not a traditional vendor show that you’re going to see you can buy things. There will be some items for sale but they’re a lot of organizations. One of my favorite is a gentleman named Chris Ruah. He runs an organization called Reptiles and Oddities and he has this presentation he does with reptiles about why we need scary snakes CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1
and why they’re important to our environment. He’s going to be there with snake demonstrations.”
Spence said there will be artisans crafting things and Oklahoma Forestry Service will be present.
“Commercial Metals is going to be there with all of the cool things they do with steel and recycling,” Spence said.
Spence said he is very fortunate to be serving as chair of DSC and that Earth Day is one of many things the organization provides to make the community better.
“It’s been a very big honor to fulfil with regards to the number of projects and collaborative community projects that we’re working on and we’ve accomplished and are still chipping away at,” Spence said. “One of those is to continually educate and energize our citizens.
“Particularly in this region, natural resources have always been thought to be abundant,” Spence said. “That’s really what we’re wanting to do is work within our community, work within our parks, work within our immediate areas and look for ways to preserve our natural resources, tend to those natural resources, making sure that we’re keeping our communities clean. That we’re thinking about our tree canopy for shading and exposure and soil erosion and water retention. These are all big mainstays of what we really support at DSC.”