Opportunity Details

Learn, explore, and give back to nature in a friendly setting. This winter, enjoy the warmth of community and warming exercise using loppers and saws to demolish invasive shrubs. Our work together makes a difference for birds, bees, and butterflies, while also beautifying Britton Woods by helping spring wildflowers and opening up views through the woods.

Through this hands-on service-learning activity, you'll get off-trail outdoor exercise and develop a sense of well-being in nature, all while building community with like-minded people. Led by Jonathan Parker.

Snacks, gloves, and water provided (bring your own water bottle).

For questions or cancellations, contact Matthew Bertrand, bertrandm@washtenaw.org.

Available Shifts

Shift Name	Signup Max	Start	End
Stewardship Volunteer	15	n/a	n/a
Stewardship Volunteer	15	n/a	n/a
Stewardship Volunteer	15	n/a	n/a
Stewardship Volunteer	15	n/a	n/a
Stewardship Volunteer	15	n/a	n/a
Stewardship Volunteer	15	n/a	n/a

Opportunity Details

Join a team "bulldozing" invasive shrubs to help the Bs—the Birds, Bees, and Butterflies, that is! You’ll use loppers and saws to clear the way for B habitat and get ideas for how to turn your own backyard into a B haven. Come for the nature, fresh air, and exercise in a friendly community setting—or just to demolish something for a good cause. Led by Matthew Bertrand, Volunteer Coordinator (also a landscape designer). Snacks, tools, and gloves provided (bring your own water bottle).

Available Shifts

Shift Name	Signup Max	Start	End
Parker Mill	15	n/a	n/a
Leonard Preserve	15	n/a	n/a
Burns-Stokes Preserve	15	n/a	n/a
Northfield Woods Preserve	15	n/a	n/a

Opportunity Details

Empower rural African women through education and sustainability—right from your community! Join Audiopedia Foundation's SD4Africa campaign as a volunteer by setting up an SD4Africa Box and collecting used micro SD cards. Your efforts will transform these SD cards into powerful educational tools, loaded with life-changing audio content on health, education, and women's empowerment.

Audiopedia's mission is to provide women in underserved communities with vital knowledge through free audio content in their mother tongues, accessible via basic mobile phones—often the only effective way to reach women who can't read or have limited literacy skills. This campaign has dual impact: it provides women with invaluable educational resources and promotes sustainable technology reuse, protecting our environment.

Setting up an SD4Africa Box is simple and highly impactful. It symbolizes your active contribution toward empowering women through education, bridging the digital divide, and promoting sustainability.

Ideal for schools, offices, community centers, sustainability advocates, educators, students, or anyone committed to women's empowerment, education equality, and environmental responsibility.

Why volunteer?

🌏 Direct Impact: Your actions provide immediate educational opportunities to rural women in Africa.
📌 Easy & Flexible: Set up collection boxes conveniently within your community or organization.
♻️ Sustainable Action: Actively promote the reuse of technology, reducing electronic waste and environmental impact.

Become an SD4Africa Champion today—your actions can empower women, educate communities, and create sustainable change!

Learn more: https://www.audiopedia.foundation/sd4africa

Opportunity Details

Repurposing for Resilience (RfR) works in the Eurobodalla Shire on the South Coast of NSW. What started out as a small, defined undertaking (to reuse and repurpose solar panels) has grown to encompass community workshops, trades training, Waste art gallery, festivals, and many more aspects relating to waste management.
While the organisation’s mission, operations and purpose are unfaltering, external understanding of who they are and what they do has become confusing and ambiguous due to the breadth and diversity of activities they undertake. This impacts their ability to attract volunteers, to pitch themselves to funding bodies, and to create community understanding of the many aspects of waste.
This assignment is to understand the breadth of work being done by this organisation, and to reshape its external communications to be cohesive, consolidated and effective.

Opportunity Details

Truly a hidden gem, Park Lyndon contains some of the finest natural areas in all of southeast Michigan, including fascinating glacial features (kettles, kames, and eskers) as well as rare wetlands (prairie fens) that host several threatened or endangered species. What better way to explore than with an expert guide while working to preserve these botanical treasures? Our work will focus on busting down invasive shrubs that block views and displace rare and unique plants and animals. 

Go behind the scenes and give nature a gift that matters this season, joining with a larger team of staff from across Washtenaw County who converge in December to invest in this special place. Snacks, gloves, and water provided (bring your own water bottle). All volunteer projects include a guided nature hike as part of the activity to help you explore, connect, and learn about some of Washtenaw County's most special places.

For questions or cancellations, contact Matthew Bertrand at bertrandm@washtenaw.org.

Available Shifts

Shift Name	Signup Max	Start	End
First date	10	n/a	n/a
Second date	10	n/a	n/a

Opportunity Details

THE TOTAL COST OF THE PROJECT IS $18,392.
Target Communities: Abonorok,Danere 1 and Danere 2 in Boki Local Government of Cross River State Nigeria
Time Frame: 1 Year
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The target communities are Danere 1, Danere 2 and Abontakon ccommunities are tropical rainforest community located at Afi Mountain in Boki LGA respectively and it is contiguous with Cross River National Park. There is deforestation activities in the communities forest and encroachment in the National Park for poaching, logging and harvest of Non Timber Forest Products (NTFPs).Their Forest is still being cut and cleared to the point of degradation. This is largely due to poverty and the continuous reliance on forest products for survival, and there is limited capacity to utilize the forest in a sustainable manner. The people see forest as resources to be exploited. Following years of exploitation the forest is no longer able to effectively perform its functions such as – provision of food, shelter, fuel wood and medicine needed for healthy living. Also of concern is the fact that these degraded forests is unable to protect our water due to watershed destruction and as a consequence the community does not have safe sources of portable water. The communities have rattan in the forest which is being unsustainable harvested.
In Ekuri community in Akamkpa tropical rainforest community, rattan is used as rope to tie yams to a barn, used as sieve for garri production, construction of musical instruments, making baskets and cane ropes.
In Danere 1 and Danre 2 communities in Boki, rattan is used in building local houses, making baskets for carrying yams, food stuff, harvested cocoa bean and basket for storing matchets.
In Abontakon community in Boki tropical rainforest rattan is mostly us tying roof mates (roofing mates made from raffia), tying of yams to yam barns and fencing. What is common amongst all the communities is that rattan is used in its crude form without value addition.

BACKGROUND
Non-Timber Forest products (NTFPs) play significant roles in livelihood sustenance especially in rural communities of sub - Sahara Africa. Over centuries, people in developing tropical regions globally have relied on forest products for food, medicine and shelter. Several thousands of people depend on harvesting, processing and sale of rattan alone in Cameroon for livelihood sustenance (Dione et al., 2000). Rattans, being important NTFP play a significant role in the international market place with over US $6.5 billion annual trade (Oteng-Amoako and Obiri-Darko, 2002). Rattans or Canes are the stems of climbing palms which belong to the family Palmae. It is widely distributed in wetlands of the tropical rainforest ecosystems of West Africa and Asia, (Uhl and Dransfield, 1987). The most important commercial canes come from the genus Calamus, Eremospatha, and Laccosperma.
According to the report of the recognizance inventory of resources of the high forest and swamp forest in Cross River State (CRSFP 1994) indicates that there are about 709 different Non-Timber Forest Products (NTFPs) in the state. Of these number 85% are traded and sold regularly by households and urban traders. The forest biodiversity provides actual income of a larger population of the state.
For the purpose of commercialization of Non-Timber Forest Products (NTFPs) in the state, the number of NTFPs have been reduced to Top 15 NTFPs.The ranking is based on demand, frequency of use and economic importance to the local households and urban traders.
According to Michael Balingga of African Research, Global Rattan trade amounts to about $6.5 Billion annually with Asia controlling 99%. Rattan is planted in plantations in Asia unlike Africa where it harvested in the wild with little prospect of regeneration. Cross River State communities that have this resource use it its raw and crude form.

USES OF RATTAN
✓ Arts and handicraft: Rattans are used for interior decoration. These include furniture, flower vases, wig holders, lampshade and stands, mirror picture frames, hand fans, shelves. Wardrobes, shopping and laundry baskets and walking sticks.
✓ Construction of building: Rattan are used traditionally to construct frames and walls. In mud houses it used as ceiling. It is also used in to construct barns and granaries.
✓ Agricultural Articles: Several agricultural items are produced from rattan for farm and on-farm activities. These include baskets, sieves, racks, winnowers, rope materials for tying ladders and trailing yam products.

THESE OPPORTUNITIES THROUGH USE OF RATTAN INCLUDES THE FOLLOWING:
❖ Presence of local and international market for rattan products. There are local and intermediate collectors and traders that ensure urban market linkages
❖ Small and informal nature of rattan cottage enterprises. Rattan business requires low capital which is mostly financed through personal savings and soft loan for market expenses.
❖ Employment opportunities in rattan local labour market. It has been noted that rate of unemployment is reducing in the informal sector. Rattan provides employment for a great number of labour force in informal sector

Rattan business activities can take the following form: -
❖ Raw rattan supply
❖ Small scale manufacturing
❖ Integrated rattan supplies and cane manufactured products


SITUATION ANALYSIS
A situation analysis was carried out by CENVIS at the affected communities with the objective of ascertaining the level of unsustainable harvesting of rattan,defrorestation,environmental degradation and poverty.

PROBLEM STATEMENT
1. Rattan is over harvested which is not sustainable
2. Bulk of harvested rattan is traded out of the state without value addition resulting to lose of revenue
3. A lot of waste occurs in the process of harvesting and processing for local use and marketing
4. Specifically, rattan is sold its raw form to outside buyers from Ijebu Ode in south west of Nigeria, Ikot Ekpene in the neighboring Akwa Ibom State and Kano in Northern Nigeria. The products are subsequently reexported back to the state in more process form. The value added is lost to the state in general.

PROGRAM GOALS AND OBJECTIVES
• Training of 75 artisans from 3 communities sustainable use of rattan
• Promote sustainable harvesting of rattan
• Regeneration of rattan with seeds collected from the wild
• Ensure continues availability of rattan
• Improve income generation of rattan through value addition through making of tables, chairs, baskets, garri sieve and other products
• Produce qualitative products to meet international standards
• Develop more products variety
• Exhibition of products to the public
• Opening a marketing outlet to market products
THE PROGRAMME JUSTIFICATION ARE:
 The forest is unsustainable exploited
 The is extreme draught and extreme rain fall as a result of deforestation
• Diminishing availability of Rattan as Non-Timber Forest Products (NTFPs) due to unsustainable harvesting
• Long hours women and youths in search of rattan would be curtail
• The above conditions make the project justifiable. The programme will arrest the negative impact of over exploitation of rattan.
OUTCOME OF THE PROGRAMME IS:
• Increase sales
• Generate additional business
• Increase artisan income
• Generate more employment for artisan
• Improve quality of production
• Buy new equipment
• Improve efficiency
• Improve working condition of the rattan value chain
• the communities’ forest is conserved and protected from unsustainable use
• Alternative income generation for 75 men and women from the 3 communities
• 75 men and women are employed directly with enhanced income

Available Shifts

Shift Name	Signup Max	Start	End
General	1	n/a	n/a

Opportunity Details

Tree guards are used when the trees are first planted to aid growth and protect from herbivores, but when the trees are older they can cause harm to both the trees and the wildlife in the woodland, so they need to be removed. Come and spend a day helping us remove these guards from our older woodlands.

Available Shifts

Shift Name	Signup Max	Start	End
General	no limit	n/a	n/a

Opportunity Details

Scrub clearance involved cutting down shrubs and small trees and burning the cuttings. This is done to create a varied age structure within the habitat and provided areas of bare ground essential for wildflowers, invertebrates and reptiles.

Available Shifts

Shift Name	Signup Max	Start	End
General	no limit	n/a	n/a

Opportunity Details

Collect new and gently used office/school supplies at your location. Materials collected will be provided to local educators with FREE classroom supplies through our Teacher Resource Center.

It's easy! We provide the supply list, set up a bin at your location and start collecting! Donations can be dropped off at our location during business hours.

Opportunity Details

Assemble and package simple educational kits for teachers and our patrons.

Great activity for 1-10 volunteers

A tour of our facility and training will occur during the volunteer shift.