LEAP Community Collaborations

This year, one of LEAP’s goals was to increase our community collaboration and involvement in events that we support:

April 29: Invent Event

Invent Event Attendees Exploring Seed Play

LEAP, SEED Taos and AIRE hosted a Seed Play Station (manned by Claire Coté & Siena Sanderson and Miguel Santistevan) We had hands-on experiments and make-it activities exploring dispersal as well as a traditional seeds of Northern NM display and guessing game. It was snowy outside, but warm and wild inside with over 800 folks in attendance with lots of playing and exploring!  See more about the event at Twirl’s website.

July 1: Questa Library Community Day

Making packing peanut sculptures outside Questa Library

The Library is a great community resource in Questa. To finish out its participation in the nation-wide, month-long Summer Reading Program, the Library hosted a Community Day with the theme “Make a Better World,” and celebrating the kids’ summer reading, free lunch and more. LEAP was invited to offer some recycled craft activities. We made corn starch packing peanut scultpures and recycled tetrapak wallets. Fun!

July 29: Successful County-Wide Clean-up Day

One of the Questa crews with the trash collected from the day

This year LEAP helped organize the 11th Annual Taos County-Wide Annual Rivers and Lands Clean-up Day, spearheaded by Amigos Bravos. In collaboration with the Forest Service Questa Ranger District, BLM Rangers at Wild Rivers and three Rocky Mountain Youth Corps crews, we focused on cleaning up illegal dump sites and litter in Northern Taos County, near Questa and the Rio Grande del Norte National Monument.

The Questa crews nearly filled a roll-away dumpster with large trash illegally dumped in nearby forests and arroyos (including couches, chairs, TVs, fridges, stoves, toilets, sinks, transmission casings etc.), 50 bags of smaller trash, and 15 bags of recyclable materials.

What a day it was, all over Taos County! Thank you to everyone who came out to to make this year’s Taos Countywide River and Lands Cleanup Day a great success! Huge progress was made across the county to remove trash from our rivers and landscapes. The effort wouldn’t have happened without: Amigos Bravos, Rocky Mountain Youth Corps – New Mexico, Carson National Forest, BLM Taos Field Office, Town of Taos, LEAP, Taos County Solid Waste, Taos Land Trust, and the community members, and many organizations and businesses who donated time, money, food, and supplies!