Ruling and Serving: Stewardship

& Environmental Justice In The
National
& Urban Community
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Ruler And Servant

• In my experiences with
stewardship, I have
found that there are two
ways to achieve your
goals of conservation.
• Ruling is achieving your
means through
disrupting nature.
• Serving is adding to
nature directly.
• But both are for the good
of nature, or those who
appreciate it.
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Where My Story Began…

• From New York City.
• Never really found my
passion.
• Heard about The Student
Conservation
Association.
• Suddenly, I’m going to
Humboldt State Park
home of the ancient
Redwoods, in a national
crew.
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Ruler of Nature

• We primarily built trail,
but cut trees, put in
fence posts as well as
other things.
• We often seemed to
disrupt the natural flow.
• But the results showed it
to be necessary.

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:

The Tale of the 5 Ton
Tree

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My brush with the heart of
nature changed me in many
ways

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The Order

• I got on the plane,
accelerating back
towards the real world.
• As I sat there, certain
things became clear.

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I found my outlet for
stewardship with the
Student Conservation
Association’s Service
Initiative
‘ConSERVE NYC’

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• ConSERVE NYC was
originally created to help
New York recover from
Hurricane Sandy
• It was so successful that
the program not only
dealt with issues related
to Sandy, but performed
acts of stewardship all
around the city.
• Since its creation I have
participated in almost all
of the ConSERVE NYC
events.

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• The success of the
program is tremendous
and vital to the
environmental health of
New York City.
• So far there have been
13 projects, over a
thousand volunteers and
4,620 hours of

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More Impacts

• Five tons of debris
removed,
Close to 80,000 SQ FT of
invasive species removed,
2000 saplings, 800 FT of
erosion fencing erected and
many other things from
bulb planting to trail
building.

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Environmental Justice:

• A few bullets of text …
• … is all you need.
• They want to see and
hear you …

These acts of service
• … not watch you read!
inspired me to take my
own time over the
summer and join a crew
in New York City
building a trail that
would house a platform
accessible to people in

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Friendships

• A few bullets of text …
• … is all you need.
• They want to see and
hear you …
• … not watch you read!

The Student Conservation Association Community Crew helped me
improve my work ethic and skill, but also it helped me find people
with the same drive and appreciation for conservation that I did .
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Environmental Justice:

• A few bullets of text …
• … is all you need.
• They want to see and
hear you …
• … not watch you read!

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About Sam Willner

Samuel Hugo Willner
35 Prospect Park West
Brooklyn, New York 11215
samwillner@gmail.com
(718) 398-3381 – home
(917) 842-9909 – mobile
Affiliation: The SCA
School: Bard High School / Early
College
Age: 16 years
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Photographs courtesy of Student Conservation Association, and Gavin McDonough, SCA Crew Leader.
ConSERVE NYC statistics taken from “ConSERVE NYC Report 2014”

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