Missouri Conservation Corps

Since 2021, Missouri Conservation Corps has been organizing and hosting volunteer workdays in Columbia’s Kiwanis Park and in other local parks and green spaces, using community volunteers to remove invasive honeysuckle and to restore a native ecosystem. MCC acquired its 501c3 nonprofit status in December 2022. Because our work in Kiwanis Park is organized and carried out on a volunteer level, this approach has transformed our volunteer work events into vehicles for community growth and collaboration. Volunteers meet other volunteers who are interested in working together to remove invasives and restore a native landscape. Volunteers meet neighbors they didn’t know, strike up friendships, and are given a sense of accomplishment and purpose. The community is strengthened while the native environment is restored. Since 2021 Missouri Conservation Corps has organized 48 volunteer workdays in Kiwanis Park, utilized more than 1200 volunteer hours, and cleared nearly 16 acres of previously honeysuckle covered park land. We have also conducted five native plantings and one native seeding. The most important lesson we have learned from our experience so far is the ability of a small group of volunteers to collaborate and to effect a large change in the environment and in the community.