Join us for our monthly FREE Science Saturday event (every first Saturday of the month). This month’s theme: Rio De Flag.

Over the past few months we have been delivering special Rio De Flag focused programs to various FUSD schools including Knoles, Kinsey, and Alpine at MEMS as part of our Flagstaff Community Foundation grant. This event will be a celebration of the student’s hard work and an opportunity to showcase what they have learned. Plus, hands on watershed and Rio activities including our 3D terrain model, kids related crafts and more.

Join us anytime 9-1pm at Willow Bend. No RSVP required.

Join The Arboretum, Willow Bend and APS at the Rio de Flag for a clean up in honor of Arbor Day on April 30th from 8am-1pm. Meet outside Willow Bend 703 E Sawmill Rd.

8am – Informational guided hike of the Rio de Flag with Jack Welch and Lynne Nemeth.
9-12pm Willow Bend/Rio Clean Up. Join us anytime throughout the day. We will be pulling up invasive weeds, planting trees and shrubs and enlarging the Willow Bend pollinator and medicinal plant gardens. Kids welcome!

Snacks, tools, gloves, and water will be provided. Plus, FREE raffle sponsored by APS and REI. Awesome gifts including trees, native plants, REI items and more! Tree pruning and professional tree selection advice will be offered throughout the day at the sign-up table.

Sign up with Shannon Benjamin at shannon.benjamin@thearb.org | (928) 774-1442 x127 or just show up the day of.

A huge thank you to all of our wonderful partners on this event!
REI, City of Flagstaff, Coconino County Parks and Rec Department, Friends of the Rio de Flag, Friends of Flagstaff’s Future.

To celebrate Arizona Gives Day, a beautiful local partnership between Firefly Gathering Festival and The Flagstaff Music Festival charity has chosen to donate a portion of their Festival proceeds to Willow Bend Environmental Education Center. AZ Gives Day is a grassroots statewide day of giving, a one day online campaign for Arizona’s nonprofits to raise as much donors and money as possible in a 24-hour period.

Firefly Gatherings is a local Festival designed to inspire profound positive social and individual growth by providing the opportunity to connect deeply, learn unique skills, become inspired, and celebrate life. Flagstaff Music Festival is made up of community members Bob Miller, Mike Taylor, Rand Jenkins, Andrea Wittekind, and Laura Rivero whose mission is to develop, organize and promote performance arts such as music, dance and theater for the purpose of bringing the performance arts to the State of Arizona and to donate revenue as created by these events to charitable organizations. Willow Bend Environmental Education Center provides education outreach services that build environmental awareness and an ethic of responsible stewardship of our natural and cultural resources. With ever decreasing funds for education the organization is relying on community members and partners to help support its critical work.

FMF Founder Mike Taylor thinks that this donation is important for all three organizations because, “We are proud to support Willow Bend’s mission. They are a great local organization providing education, outreach, art and a place for better connecting with our environment.”  Andrea Wittekind, one of the founding members of Firefly Gathering sees an inspiring alignment between Firefly and Willow Bend, saying “it takes communities supporting each other’s endeavors in order for us all to thrive and continue with our goals. Firefly has strived to model and teach strong environmental ethics within itself, the local community and its reaches. Paying it forward is crucial to supporting ongoing education and building awareness. Firefly is thrilled to be supporting Willow Bend, and looks forward to future opportunities for collaboration and promoting its excellence. ”

Willow Bend’s Executive Director, Moran Henn is very excited to receive these much needed funds and is thrilled for the kinds of projects they will go to support, for instance, upcoming Saturday Science events, free community events held every first Saturday of the month. “with this generous gift we will be able to engage even more community members, and provide opportunities for new families to experience hands on environmental programing and activities” said Henn.

This Arizona Gives Day, April 5th, invest in environmental education and contribute to Willow Bend.

DONATE:
www.azgives.org/c/GivesDay/a/willowbendcenter
Or:
www.razoo.com/us/story/Willow-Bend-Environmental-Education-Center

Willow Bend is Coconino County’s ONLY year-round full-time environmental education center. We serve over 18,000 students, residents and visitors a year delivering programs that build environmental awareness and promote an ethic of responsible stewardship of our natural and cultural resources.

We are funded by individuals and businesses who value and understand the importance of environmental education and want to take an active role in building the kind of world we want to live in — socially, environmentally, and economically — a world we want our children and grandchildren to inherit.

Every donation is significant! No gift is too small!

Thank you for your support,
The Willow Bend team

Join us for an introduction to fermentation workshop on Saturday, April 16th 10-12.

About Fermentation: Fermentation is one of the oldest methods for preserving food. All around the world people have been transforming food with the help of microbes for thousands of years. Fermented foods likely make up a large part of your diet including foods such as chocolate, cheese, coffee, yogurt, olives, salami, and beer and wine. Fermented foods are popular because they often result in unique and complex flavor-packed foods that cannot be found elsewhere. In recent years we are seeing more and more people turning back to traditional fermenting traditions to embrace healthy, flavorful, and affordable foods.

About the Workshop: The purpose of this workshop is to provide you some basic knowledge about fermenting foods. We will delve into both the scientific basis of how fermented foods affect health and the techniques used for at-home fermentation projects. We will focus on fermented foods including kombucha tea, vegetable ferments, sauerkraut, and honey ferments.

Workshop participants will be able to sample various fermented foods at a “tasting station” and will go home with kombucha starter kit including a kombucha scoby, a starter amount of kombucha tea, and instructions on how to brew your own.

Cost: $25. Limited spots. Sign up required.

Presenters Bios: Mike Dechter – Mike has been an ecologist and environmental planner for over a decade. He has been collecting and cooking with wild and fermented foods for the past several years. Mike works with local restaurants and other organizations such as the Flagstaff Arboretum to educate others on local and wild foods and use traditional knowledge to make them both relevant and delicious.

Jake Ochsankehl – Jake is a cuisine and food enthusiast. He has been working in restaurants for nine years and has turned his eye to foraging and fermentation for the last two years. Jake is currently the head chef for the restaurants associated with the Weatherford Hotel.

Join us for another exciting Science Saturday event on April 2nd from 9-1 at Willow Bend.

This month’s theme: energy. Hands on activities with Wind for Schools, Prometheus Solar and Findlay Toyota.

Make your own wind turbine, eat delicious solar oven s’mores, learn all about the Plug and Play solar kit, play fun games, and see the inside of a brand new Toyota Prius.

Plus Prometheus Solar will be giving away FREE Belkin Conserve Insight energy monitors ($30 value each!) to the first families who attend and participate in the activities (so make sure you come early). And Findlay Toyota will be BBQ hot dogs and burgers from 11-12:30!

You don’t want to miss this one so bring the whole family and join the fun.

FREE event open to the community. All ages welcome! No need to sign up, join us anytime throughout the day!

Questions? Call (928) 779 1745 or emailmoran@willowbendcenter.org

We are so excited to announce a new partnership between Willow Bend and Findlay Toyota.

Between April 1st-June 31st, Findlay Toyota will donate $100 from every new Prius sold at their Flagstaff dealership to Willow Bend!

Findlay Toyota is a locally owned car dealership located on 5030 East Marketplace Dr., Flagstaff.

We are very grateful to Findlay Toyota for supporting environmental education and investing in the work we do in the community. If you are at the dealership, even if buying a different car or just looking around, please thank them from us.

They will be showcasing their Prius during our April 2nd Science Saturday event 9-1pm.

You can view the promotion flier: PriusFlyer.

March is Arizona Archaeology & Heritage Month!

Come celebrate with us on March 19th from 10-1pm at Full Circle Trade and Thrift 2 S Beaver St.

10am-1pm Hands on Archaeology Activities. We will be reconstructing pottery shards, looking at archaeological artifacts, simulating an archaeological dig site, and hosting Special guest Forest Service Archaeologist Neil Weintraub from 10-11 for a special Split Twig Figurines activity.
11:30-12:15 Downtown Geology Tour Join us for an informative and fun Downtown Geology Tour and learn things you never knew about the history of downtown!  FREE with a $10< receipt from Full Circle. LIMITED spots. Sign-up starts at Full Circle at 10am. Information about the tour, prices, sign-up and more HERE.

In addition: 2-4pm Guided archaeology tour to Keyhole Sink Petroglyph site. More info HERE.

Willow Bend is excited to partner with NAU’s Colorado Plateau Museum for Arthropod Biodiversity and host the 2016 Summer Bug Camp!

Children 6 to 12 will learn about insect natural history and biodiversity through a series of fun projects & activities. Interact with live bugs and spiders from the insect zoo, go on an insect scavenger hunt for predators, herbivores, and omnivores, and make insect cuisine! Parents will be invited to an insect banquet and open house on the last day of camp.

COST: $175 per camper; NAU staff and students receive a $15 discount when they register early.

Limited spots! Register early to ensure a spot for your happy campers.

More information 2016 Summer Bug Camp Flyer.

To register online visit NAU’s Bug Camp page HERE.