About the Martinsville-Henry County Community Nature Initiative

With the support of The Harvest Foundation of the Piedmont, Virginia Museum of Natural History and its partners, Dr. Denny Casey and Tamara Poles developed a new nature and outdoor initiative entitled the Martinsville Henry County Community Nature Initiative (MHC CNI). The CNI will serve as a clearinghouse for environmental information, use nature as a way to stimulate learning, develop opportunities for quality family time in the outdoors, and position VMNH as a leader in environmental education. CNI will serve as a means to provide hands-on, real-world opportunities for children, educators, and families to increase appreciation for nature and as an effective means to better understand and address community environmental issues.

Click the above CNI logo for official website and to access your Earth Week Passport!

Earth Week 2010 Highlights

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Earth Week Celebration!!

It's here! The Earth Week Celebration is here!! Earth Week officially starts tomorrow April 15!!!! Please visit www.mhccni.org or www.vmnh.net for more information regarding this celebration! Earth Week is a series of programs, events, and festivals conducted annually by MHC CNI the Saturday before Earth Day through the Saturday after Earth Day. The purpose is to celebrate Earth Day and learn about the wonderful programs and actions that are taking place in the community, even learn ways that you can go green in your life. This year we will be conducting Earth Week a day earlier and will include Earth Day at VMNH (a conference style event for students), Screen on the Green, Earth Day 5K, guided hikes, an environmental expo, star gazing, geocaching, among other exciting activities!! We will be closing this event with the Earth Day Festival at the Smith River Sports Complex!!!

Friday, April 8, 2011

Piedmont Kite Festival




The Piedmont Kite Festival was a success!Thank you to all my volunteers that worked very hard during this event to make it so wonderful! We had over 760 people participate in the event! Thanks to our awesome volunteers, participants were able to enjoy a great time doing the following activities; listening to live music, getting their faces painted, building kites, painting kites, blowing bubbles, building helicopters, playing disc golf, testing their bird sports trivia, learning about bird migration, and pushing themselves to the limit in the Bird Olympics game and Food for the Brood game. Representatives from HC Patriots RC club, Civil Air Patrol, Girls Scouts, USACE, SEMAA, Martinsville Parks and Recreation, and chick-fil-A did a great job with their activities during the festival! Pictures to come soon! If you want to read more about it check out this link to the Martinsville Bulletin!