ILLINOIS—Working in the Forest Service sometimes takes us far outside familiar forested settings to meet people where they live, and this can bring lifetime benefits to those we meet.

Case in point: Sinead Abarca, 33, works with preschoolers and staff in her local Chicago community. She credits her lifelong love of nature, an affinity she shares with her students to this day, with her childhood experience of attending Forest Service funded, nature-based summer camps.

Born in Mexico, Abarca moved to Chicago as a young child. There, she grew up in an impoverished predominantly Hispanic community and did not have the financial means to attend summer camp. As a former student of El Valor in Chicago, she said she benefitted from her introduction to nature made possible through Forest Service partnerships with community-based organizations.

She explored and investigated nature through this camp and created a website to share what she learned.

Abarca first participated in July 2001 when she was age 11. The Forest Service sponsored the camp and field trips to natural areas. “We went to the Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie and the Little Red Schoolhouse, a local landmark. On the Midewin, I remember bunkers, tall grass and critters everywhere. We slept over. I was scared during the sleepover, but it was really fun.”

During one experience she visited the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, a key Forest Service partner in Chicago that provided instructors for the camp through the partnership. “I learned from that experience I liked working with others, and I was motivated and inspired to do what I do now in early childhood education,” she added. 
El Valor is a nonprofit organization that serves 4,000 children, adults with disabilities and their families. Their goal is to help their clients and their families achieve excellence and participate fully in life.

Abarca has worked for El Valor for several years now, formerly as a teacher and lately as an education supervisor. She said the summer camp was her only encounter with the Forest Service as a child. 

Nowadays, El Valor employees collaborate with the Forest Service annually, working closely with Mike Rizo of International Programs. Rizo previously worked at Midewin from 2001 to 2008 and was directly involved with the summer camp during its beginning years, including when Abarca was a camper. 

“We try to inspire children through nature-based themes,” Abarca said. “We have a primary focus on the monarch butterfly, a strong cultural symbol in the community. We have also focused on birds that migrate through Chicago.”

Interestingly, Abarca grew up in Michoacan, Mexico, near where most of the monarch butterflies famously overwinter before departing on their annual spring flight across much of eastern North America.

“In the Chicago area we have people from Mexico and throughout Latin America. They truly make that connection about bird and monarch butterfly migrations. As the season goes along, we plant milkweed and raise butterflies. We collect eggs, and then we release them during the summer. We do a program each September closing out the monarch season with a large celebration at all our sites. The children dress up as monarch butterflies and caterpillars, and we release the last monarchs raised in the classrooms and at home that will begin their journey back to Mexico, where their great grandmothers overwintered.” 

“What I’ve seen as an educator, one effective way to connect children with the outdoors is to foster the connection between culture and nature. Bringing nature to my classroom is only the first step. Taking the children into nature outside is critical. It is also important to find a balance between technology and the outdoors. I think my experiences at the summer camp helped me to realize I wanted to be a teacher. I kept what I experienced as a child, and I pass on those values today to my children to go outside and explore. I let them get outside and get dirty, and I encourage my teachers to do the same,” Abarca added.

Abarca shares her love of nature with her own three kids, ages 2, 4 and 7.