Governor O'Malley Expands Maryland Conservation Corps
April 25, 2008
Governor O’Malley: Well, we’re going to go down to the stream in just a second and do some tests and to see whether the water quality is getting better or whether it’s getting worse. And one of the things that we want to do in our short time on God’s beautiful planet is to what? Make it...
Children: Better.
Governor O’Malley: Better. You got it. You knew that in your hearts, right?
Children: Yes.
Governor O’Malley: Well, we’re here announcing a couple of things. Earlier this week we announced a new initiative to bring more of our future generation -- that’s all of you -- into closer contact with nature. Because right now what’s happening too often, a lot of us, even though we live -- you know, the City is only how far away from here as the crow flies, Ranger, about?
Ranger: Ten miles.
Governor O’Malley: About 10 miles. But how many people ever come to visit here? Lots of people roll by on the highway, but not as many kids get in touch with the tremendous amount of nature and State parks and other things that we have in our State. They stay inside, they watch videos, they play video games, they watch TV -- when all of this is out here for us to see and to do.
And so as part of our announcements this week about the different things we’re doing to promote environmental literacy, you know, an awareness of how our actions affect the Bay and the streams and the land and the air, we are announcing today an expansion of our Maryland Conservation Corps, to include something called the Civic Justice Corps. And that will involve about 200 kids that are able to come out. A lot of them kids that otherwise drug dealers might try to coax into gangs or into other activity that leads to an early death and a wasted life and the beauty of an individual life.
And instead, we’re creating a conservation corps so that a lot of kids might be able to get out here and be in touch with the streams and with the nature and with the trees and be able to breathe a little more deeply and realize the greatness that God has in his hopes for them.
So that’s what we’re announcing today. We’re going to go down by the stream. But whether it’s through parks and people, Maryland Conservation Corps, Civic Justice corps, whether it’s class trips with our schools getting into the parks more and into nature more, as a State, we want to promote connecting up kids with nature, much more so than we ever have before. And that can help in a number of ways, can’t it?
Children: Yes.
Governor O’Malley: Isn’t it a lot easier to go to school and to hang in there with class if you know that you’re going to be able to go to the park later on that week?
Children: Yes.
Governor O’Malley: I mean, it makes it -- you almost kind of bridge to it, don’t you?
The other thing that it does is when you’re out in the park, you’re physically active. And what the studies are saying is that more and more kids are having a difficult time getting out there and staying active. So this keeps you active. You don’t even think about whether you’re tired or not. At the end of the day you might be tired, right? But when you’re out there and you’re in the streams and you’re doing this and you’re physically active.
But the third thing that you do -- the more aware you are of how fragile our environment is and the more aware that you are of your individual actions making a difference in making our planet healthier and better and cleaner, the better our chance of passing it on to your kids -- kind of funny to think about that -- passing it on to your kids in a cleaner and better condition than we received it from our parents.
So those are all the big, important reasons why we’re doing this.
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