NH Audubon Screws Pooch

This is a local issue that I take personally. Normally, I respect all copyright, and never print out a full article without getting permission first. However, in this case, it is likely to get dumped from the paper's website without any way of retrieval. I also donate annually to the NH Audubon Society, and think this a travesty.

Without further ado:

'It wasn't a job to her. It was fun.' Ruth Smith says she worked hard to tell kids about nature
By CHELSEA CONABOY
Monitor staff

Ruth Smith began planning her career as an environmental educator when she was in the fourth grade. That was when Mrs. Phinney, an instructor with Massachusetts Audubon, visited her class and brought a female possum. Smith said she can still remember how warm the possum's belly was when she stuck her fingers in its carrying pouch.

Later, she wondered if she could do Mrs. Phinney's job when she grew up. Until one week ago, Smith, now 42, was Mrs. Phinney for hundreds of children in the Concord area as the educational director for the Audubon Society of New Hampshire.

On Oct. 20, after 18 years on the job, Smith was laid off, along with seven other employees.

Audubon management wants to direct resources to more action-based education and land protection. Many parents and students of Smith's have reacted in anger and sadness, saying the camps won't be the same without her energy, calm discipline and the assurance she offered to parents that their children were learning and safe.

"Ruth holds Audubon together," said Colleen Twomey, 16, of Chichester, who has been an assistant instructor at camp for three years.

Twomey began attending Audubon's camps when she was 10. Being a councilor under Smith helped her realize that she wants to work with kids.
"She knows so much about nature and children, and the combination of the two is incredible," Twomey said. "It wasn't a job to her. It was fun."

Twomey had planned to return as an instructor this summer. Without Smith, she isn't sure she will.

"She was such an important part of it," she said.

A sense of wonder

Smith developed a dedication to both the environment and nonprofit work at a young age. She passed summer days as a kid at an Audubon camp in Massachusetts. Many nights, she sat at the kitchen table with her parents, writing out address labels for fundraising letters for the museum her father directed.

She came to New Hampshire's Audubon through an internship during her junior year at the University of New Hampshire. She quickly found her passion in environmental education.

"I just love the opportunity to show a child something that they've never experienced before," she said.

At camp one day, a preschooler was playing with colored water that was part of a demonstration on rainbows. He started playing with droppers of red and yellow. When he mixed the two together, his eyes got big, Smith said.

He threw his hands up and announced at the top of his lungs, "I made orange!"

To him, it was a "massive discovery," Smith said. She said she has stayed committed to her job because of those opportunities to witness that "magical sense of wonder."

Smith said she worked hard to bring those discoveries to more kids. As camp director, she added a program during the school year called Fledgling Fun for preschoolers and their parents. She also started a teenage leader-in-training program and a trip program for older students. Most recently, Audubon added day camps in Durham at the Mill Pond Center and in Newbury at The Fells.

The second reason she's stayed at Audubon is the people. For the last five years, all the assistant instructors at the Concord camp have been former campers. "I have literally watched children grow up through my programs," she said.

Learning lessons

Smith said she has tried to teach her campers about more than the environment. She's tried to teach them about connectedness, among animals and plants in nature and among people.

Adlai Gordon, 11, of Concord said he learned that lesson well. He started going to the camp in preschool. Adlai said his favorite things about it included the zip line and a skit at the beginning of each session that showed "this is a camp where everybody's nice to you, and you try to give back," he said.

Adlai's father, Joshua Gordon, went through four years of Fledgling Fun between his son and 9-year-old daughter, Nina. He said Smith could engage his children in the lessons, whether they were in a classroom making paper bats or in the field looking at birds' nests.

Gordon said it was difficult to tell his kids that she was no longer at Audubon.

"To them, Audubon is Ruth," he said.

Gordon said he won't be donating to Audubon anymore. "I'm just angry at them," he said. "How can an organization get rid of such an essential component to it?"

Smith said she saw her work with kids as important. But, when Audubon president David Houghton began pushing to spend more time and money educating adults about the urgency of protecting wildlife habitat from the state's rapid development, Smith said she joined the effort.

"I wholeheartedly endorsed that need to do more adult education . . . because I worry about what our children are going to inherit," she said.

Smith is pursuing a master's in environmental education at Antioch College in Ohio and this fall began working on a program to bring smart growth concepts to local planners.

What comes next

When Houghton began talking about cutting some programs, Smith couldn't agree. When she was laid off, she said, Houghton told her the organization couldn't raise enough money to support the education department at the current level.

"I don't think he tried very hard," she said.

Houghton said he isn't thinking about scaling back programming. Instead, he wants to "freshen it,"he said, and add more family and adult programs. The summer camps will continue, he said.

Houghton wouldn't speak specifically about Smith's layoff except to say he has "a great fondness for her."

"I wish her all the success in the world," he said. "She's a terrific person, and she is missed here at Audubon." He added that summer campers won't be disappointed in the changes being made.

Smith said she has been overwhelmed by the support she has received in the last week. Some people call to express sadness and anger, she said. Others call with possible job and volunteer opportunities.

She said she's using this as a chance to re-examine what she wants to do.

"I'm going to be okay," she said. "It's Audubon that I worry about."

Photos hanging at the Silk Farm Audubon Center portray a younger Smith sitting with children in a circle on the grass. An Audubon poster down the hall reads, "Who cares if the kids want to explore the world? We do."

------ End of article

Link to Article

Ruth Smith is a treasure. Her efforts made the NH Audubon Soc. what it is today. She in unlikely to be truly replaced. Both my niece and nephew adored her as they both attended the Society's summer camps.

I have spoken to a some of the Society's largest local donors, and a couple of them are so outraged by this action that they are discontinuing financial support immediately.

My mother knows a bunch more donors than I do, as she used to practically live there during the summer, and she too is hearing the same thing from many of those to which she has spoken.

The Board may want to consider action against Pres. Houghton. It is, as the article correctly states, mainly through his 'initiatives' that a huge clowd has formed over future private donations to the NH Audubon Society - and in a cheap-ass state like NH, without private donors, well, you figure it out.