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, May 28, 2009

Collins Family Wins Grand Prize!


The Collins Family is the first family to win the Earth Week Grand Prize!! They had their choice of participating in a guided educational canoe trip down the Smith River by DRBA or receive two tickets to the Gemini Fest that is June 19. Mr. and Mrs Collins decided to treat themselves to a date to the Gemini Fest.


Quote from Tim Collins: " You guys made the Collins family's week! My family and i loved all the activities you provided, there was such a range of different activities to choose from, my kids wanted to go to all of them!"


CONGRATULATIONS COLLINS FAMILY AND THANK YOU FOR PARTICIPATING!!!!!


Earth Week Highlights!

Hello Everyone!


The first annual Earth Week went very well! We had 27 activities in 9 days and over a dozen organizations participating!!! Thank you to everyone who worked hard to make this a successful event!!

Here are a few highlights from the week

Community Pride, Community Wide Litter Pick-up: The Frank Wilson Park location was cancelled due to the lack of participation however the other four sites did very well accumulating dozens of bags of trash from throughout the community! Great Job Guys!!

Earth Day 5 K: Hosted over 90 participants! T-shirts, food, and drinks were provided to participants. What a great time! Good Work!

Friends of Philpott Environmental Expo: Over 400 people attended this event and dozens of vendors were advertising their organizations from throughout the area. What a great time and such great exposure for us!

VMNH Earth Day Event: VMNH provided environmental programs for school groups for Earth Week. Over 300 students participated in this event!

Screen on the Green: At this event we had kids playing recycling games, getting their faces painted, playing on playground equipment, playing with bubbles before showing the movie, "Over the Hedge." We had over 50 people attend this event.